


The Next Place

by maniacalmole



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley dies but IT'S FINE HE'S FINE!!!, Gen, Hastur/Ligur only sort of they don't know what they are and neither do I so take it as you like it, M/M, demon afterlife, seriously guys Crowley is fine juST HEAR ME OUT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-11 12:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15972305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maniacalmole/pseuds/maniacalmole
Summary: Crowley dies. And then he wakes up. In the Next Place.And, in this afterlife for demons that he never knew existed, and from which he is determined to escape, he finds someone there that he's not particularly happy to see....





	1. And then the murders began

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't use archive warnings because I'm not sure how to warn about death when the story is ABOUT the afterlife, and it's hard to judge violence when everyone is already dead, and thus are at worst annoyed by it. I think it would be best for me to say that bad things happen but they are not graphic.
> 
> Extra kudos and thanks and apologies to Staubengel, to whom I told the beginning of this story, and then made wait for months and months before she could find out how it ends. Thank you for your angry faces of encouragement and inspiration! ò.ó

            In the end, Hastur killed Crowley.

            He tracked him down in a fit of rage and before anyone could do anything to stop it, he attacked, and the serpent was gone—irrevocably, not only removed from his physical form, but banished from this plane of existence. There was no path of return.

            It was horrible. I could mention Aziraphale’s grief, but I won’t dwell on it.

            Crowley had fought tooth and claw until the end, with all the blind optimism and desperation for life he had always had. He died with teeth bared and tears in his eyes. It was truly terrible.

            But I’ll spare you all the emotional details. Who would want to read about a thing like that?*

 

*That’s right, I’m looking at YOU.

 

            This story isn’t about all of that. It’s about what happened next.

            Next, Crowley woke up.

 

            What Crowley was aware of first was a haziness that he couldn’t place, whether it was around him or within him. What he noticed next was that he had an awareness of anything at all. There was something left then. Something still existed, _he_ still existed, which meant maybe he wasn’t dead after all. After about thirty seconds, it occurred to him that he should open his eyes.

            As soon as he had the thought, he could see. Something felt off about the whole thing, but he was distracted from the weird feeling when he realized that he was still in the place where Hastur had attacked. The same room, in g—somebody knows where, where the duke had lured him and sprung on him with that bloody knife. Everything was grey and dim. There was a lot of something dark on the floor.

            Terror sprung up within him at the thought that Hastur might still be there. The fight might still be going on. He’d thought he’d been done for, maybe he still was, but maybe he hadn’t been out for as long as he thought, maybe he had only blacked out for a few seconds and the duke was still circling him, waiting for him to wake up so he could see the light die in his eyes when he ended him for real.

            Crowley spun around, looking for him frantically. Where was he? Why was everything so dark? His vision was fuzzy and he seemed to be spinning far faster than possible. It made him dizzy, less in the blood-loss-in-your-brain kind of way, and more because it was too fast for him to process. Empty room. Grey stuff on the floor—blood—his blood. A large path of it led to the door. Hastur must have tracked it that way when he left, possibly thinking Crowley was dead—but no. There was no way Duke Pyromania would leave him there unattended. He would probably be back any second.

            Crowley made for the door like lightning, miraculously able to move faster than he ever had despite his wounds, probably because of sheer fright. The door slammed open and Crowley was out it in a second. Out into the world. He went whichever way was in front of him, and he didn’t stop for a long, long time.

 

            It was only when he did stop that Crowley realized he had no idea where he was, and that something was very wrong with his eyes. The world still looked fuzzy, and it kept blurring, the edges disappearing, or everything fading away so that all he was aware of was himself, afraid, trying to move but not able to remember what running was supposed to feel like. He thought about rubbing his eyes but he couldn’t find his hands. He wondered how much brain damage Hastur had inflicted, and how he was going to get a new corporation when one of the _dukes_ of Hell was after him. He tried to bring back the world around him. He seemed to be in the middle of a field. Yes, there were blades of grass and wildflowers, tilting in the breeze that he could see but not feel. How far from London had he run? He stood still for a moment and tried to let everything come back to itself. Things _had_ to fall into place—he had to still be here—he _couldn’t_ be dead. Couldn’t be dying. Things couldn’t be over, not all of them, not yet.

            He stood very still until, gradually, his vision cleared and he was able to see himself again.

            Yes, there he still was, demon in human clothes, all black and white. He stretched out his fingers, but they were still numb. He wondered how hurt he was. At least he couldn’t feel the pain.

            Maybe he could heal himself with a miracle. Hastur had used some pretty vicious weapons against him, but he had to try. He looked down at himself to see where the worst damage was done.

            That was when he realized that he had forgotten to imagine himself covered in blood.

            And that was when he realized that he was only seeing what he expected, and he had only imagined himself into existence at all.

            He blinked—not really, but he tried to and it felt like he did—and the world of gently waving grass vanished, and he was floating in nothingness.

            In that nothingness there was a small, distant ringing sound.

            Crowley felt like hyperventilating. The only problem was, he didn’t need to breathe. He never had, but at least before it had felt more possible. He could still see himself because he _wanted_ to see himself, he wanted it so badly that he had apparently willed a visual form of himself into existence, but he could tell it wasn’t really real. He clung to the image as firmly as he could, holding his hands out in front of him, wiggling his fingers, trying to feel his face, managing to frown. He even imagined a floor, so at least he was standing on something instead of floating in the middle of an endless void. At least this was an endless _plane_ , which was, apparently, a little bit better.

            “I’m dead,” he thought. He said the words out loud. He could _hear_ them. “I’m not dead,” he said. He was filled with doubt. “This isn’t what usually happens. This isn’t where you go when you’re waiting to be given a new body. Hastur didn’t just discorporate me.” He put his hands to his head, and he could feel them—and then he couldn’t. It was all in his head. Or rather, it wasn’t, because his head wasn’t really there. His body was gone, his demonic form was gone too, but somehow, he was here. “He _destroyed_ me,” Crowley said. “But I’m still here. Where? Humans, they can dream of an afterlife. Demons don’t have a _heaven_.”

            “Right-o.”

            Crowley froze at the sound of the other voice. His mind, or spirit, or whatever you could call it, searched for some familiar way to frame how he was feeling, and in a moment he was remembering the sensation of ice-cold water dripping down your spine. He heard footsteps approaching on the floor he had just created. He turned around.

            “Well, well,” said the despicable voice, wearing a too-familiar grin. “If it isn’t the man who _murdered_ me.”

            Crowley tried to take a step back, but Ligur appeared before him, as if space no longer meant anything to him. The once-demon leered at him. He looked just the same as before—ten minutes _before_ he had last seen him, anyway—except there was an even more ruthless gleam in his eye. He grinned at Crowley with teeth clenched and arm raised, and Crowley realized there was a knife in his hand.

            “L—Ligur—er—what the Heaven—”

            “What’re you stammering about, Crowley?” Ligur practically sang. “Didn’t expect to see me non-liquefied? Hasn’t death been treating me well? I tell ya, it’ll do wonders for your holy-water drenched, burnt and disintegrated _skin_.”

            “L-l-listen,” Crowley stammered. “Jussst—just listen. I didn’t—”

            “Oh, you _had_ to, didn’t you, Crowley?” Ligur’s voice had become a giddy sort of snarl. “Had to kill me, or else I’d go and end the world, right? Couldn’t let that happen. _Nooo_. Couldn’t just do what you’re bloody told! Had to go and commit a murder!” The duke pouted theatrically. “Against me. A fellow demon.”

            “Oh, come off it, Ligur—” Crowley began, but the other demon’s face darkened so dramatically that he was silenced.

            “No,” Ligur murmured. “You killed me. Without a second thought, without warning, like a coward. Well, what goes around comes around, eh? You got your little world, but only for a while. Now you’re here with me. And you’re right, Crowley.” He grinned again, eyebrows pulled together, his face all menace and shadows. “There is no Heaven for our kind. Welcome to demon Hell!”

            Crowley tried to fall backwards, but Ligur was faster. He brandished the knife and stabbed Crowley right through his chest. Crowley let out a scream and grabbed for the handle, but the wound was already inflicted.

            It just didn’t hurt at all.

            Ligur was cackling. Crowley, in a panic, tried to grab the knife’s handle, but his hands kept passing through it. It took him several seconds to realize that he couldn’t feel the knife, he didn’t seem to be bleeding, he felt perfectly fine, and Ligur was giggling and snorting at him.

            “You—should’ve—seen—your—face!” the duke choked out. He was doubled over, hand slapping his knee in time with his words. Tears of laughter streamed down his face. “And that scream! Ah, best scream I’ve heard in ages. Bloody hell, I’ve missed those.”

            “What is going _on_?” Crowley wailed. He still couldn’t get a grip on the knife.

            “Ahhh,” Ligur sighed. He wiped a tear from his eye. “I’ve been waiting ages to do that.”

            “What do you mean? What is this place? How did I get here? How did you know I’d get here? And what is with this bloody knife?”

            “Looks real funny sticking out of you like that,” Ligur said proudly. He put his hands on his hips. “I oughta just leave it there.”

            “ _Ligur!_ ”

            “All right, all right.” The demon walked back over and pulled the knife out of Crowley’s chest. “It takes a while to learn how to hold things,” he said. “I’ve been carryin’ that round with me since I saw you dead with it sticking out of your chest.”

            “Hold on,” Crowley said. He looked closer at the blade. “That’s what he attacked me with.”

            “So someone finally stabbed you, eh?” Ligur looked elated. “And who was it, hmm? Who was it what murdered you, Crowley?”

            Ligur was wiggling his lopsided eyebrows at him. Crowley rolled his eyes and sighed.

            “Hastur.”

            “I _knew_ it!” Ligur leaped around. “I knew he’d get you back! Good ol’ Hastur. Er, or I should say, Bad Ol’ Hastur. It’s just a stupid phrase I picked up from watching humans too long, you know how it is. I wouldn’t actually call him ‘good’. Not after he did a great thing like killing you.” Ligur tossed the knife up and down. “Yep. Good against demons. Blessed, and all that. Course, dunt work here.”

            “But how did you get it?” Crowley asked. “Where is ‘here?’”

            “Huh.” Ligur crossed his arms and gave him a satisfied look. “I should just let you squirm, shouldn’t I?”

            “You’re—we’re—dead.” Crowley ran his hands across his face. “This is—an afterlife? But for demons? But where is it? And why is it so—empty? But also connected to Earth somehow. Where _are_ we?”

            Ligur raised his eyebrows. He beckoned towards himself, and when Crowley involuntarily leaned forward, Ligur’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth. Then he leaned away and shrugged. “Nope. Not tellin’.”

            Crowley, in spite of his recent terror and having been murdered twice within the past—well, however long it had been—had just enough sanity left to be thoroughly annoyed. He huffed and turned away, then started, through great concentration, walking. “Fine. I’ll figure it out by myself.”

            “Yep. Have fun in the endless void.”

            “’S’not a void,” Crowley grumbled. “It’s a _plane_.”

            “Yeah, congrats on having found the floor.” Ligur was yelling after him now. “I’m sure you’ll have no trouble at all finding _all_ the answers.”

            Crowley grumbled nothing in particular in response, just trying to keep his mind off of his situation, which was difficult when you were trying to figure out what your situation was, and kept walking.

 

            He walked for a long time. It was almost starting to feel like it had on Earth. Maybe Crowley wasn’t _dead_ dead. Maybe he was just being kept somewhere, until Hell found him and gave him a corporation again. Of course, Ligur was also here, and had been for a while. Nobody had come looking for _him_. Everyone knew that demons, and angels, technically, _could_ die. They didn’t go to Heaven or Hell like humans did. They were just—gone.

            Or they were here. Wherever here was.

            Crowley was starting to get _really_ worried.

 _Oh, hello, anxiety_ , he thought bitterly. _Bout time you showed up_.

            _But then what’s the point?_ said a nasty little voice. _What is there to be anxious about? You’re dead. You’re not in Hell, you’re just gone. It’s over._

            _And hello despair_. Crowley scowled. _Couldn’t you both just piss off for a moment?_

            He was trying to concentrate. Every time he came close to comprehending his situation, he would realize that the visual world he had created had vanished again, which startled him so much that he had to pause for several minutes until the floor and his body reappeared and he could calm down. _Maybe this_ is _all just happening inside my head? If it is, then can I make whatever I want happen? Could I bring—say—a plant here?_ He tried. Nothing happened. He thought about something simpler—a pencil. He imagined holding it in his hand. Again, nothing happened.

            He thought about a way out.

            After a few more agonizing moments of nothing happening, he heard footsteps behind him.

 _I definitely wouldn’t voluntarily imagine that,_ he thought with a grimace, and he turned around.

            It was Ligur. His face fell when he saw that he had been spotted.

            “Rats.”

            “Are you following me?”

            “How’d you know?”

            “I heard footsteps.”

            “That’s weird,” Ligur said, scratching his head. “Nobody else makes footsteps.”

            “Nobody—wait. There are other people here?”

            Ligur made yet another exaggeratedly unhappy face. He seemed to have a plethora of those. “Ah, shit.”

            “Why are you following me?” Crowley was relieved to find that he could still throw his arms up in the air in frustration. “If you’re not going to tell me anything. Are you just going to stab me again?”

            Ligur gave a wicked grin, another thing he had in ready supply. “Maybe.” When Crowley started walking away again, he said, “No. Look.” He hurried after him and cried, “I’m bored, all right? Been here for so long I’d do anything for fun. Even follow you around.” He hunched his shoulders and walked over to him. “Besides. At least this way I can see your face when you find out what’s going on.”

            “And what is going on?” Crowley asked, rather sourly.

            “It is my great pleasure to inform you that you are, in fact, _dead_.”

            “Yeah, I’d figured that one out, thanks,” Crowley said, even though he hadn’t. Not for sure. It felt like crap.

            “Welcome to the afterlife. It’s boring as—well, not Hell,” Ligur said, with a hint of nostalgia, “—but you get the point. The place is mostly empty, but we’re not the only ones here. The others who are here are infuriating. They don’t tell us nuthin’ except what they think we ‘need to know’, then they buzz off doing their own thing and we can’t follow them wherever it is they go.”

            Crowley had the uncomfortable feeling that all of this was rather familiar, although not to his own particular species.

            “They’ll talk to you, though,” Ligur said. “At least for a second. _You’re_ not supposed to _be_ here.”

            “Good. Then they can let me out.”

            “Ha. Not likely. I’m not supposed to be here either. Doesn’t mean we’re allowed to leave.”

            Crowley groaned. Ligur smacked him on the back.

            “There, there,” he said. Then he stabbed him.

            Crowley glared daggers right back at him.

            “You dint scream that time,” Ligur said, disappointed.

            “That’s because I know you can’t hurt me, you outright dunce.” Crowley gestured at his chest impatiently.

            Ligur begrudgingly removed the knife. He shrugged. “Anyway, now it’s even. You kill me, I kill you.”

            “That’s twice you’ve killed me now!”

            “Yeah, well, you killed me first, so it’s only fair. And nothing happened to you when I murdered you anyway. At least _your_ murder of _me_ made a big writhing mess. I bet I looked pretty cool, huh?”

            Crowley sighed. “And you’re sure you’re my only hope of getting out of here?”

            “Yep.” Ligur started walking in the direction they’d come from and gestured for him to follow. “The others are more in the Mediterranean area. You were walking out towards the ocean. Pretty soon you’d’ve been headed for Iceland.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right, I got the name for this chapter from that one meme.
> 
> And I may have (definitely) gotten the name from the show "The Good Place" which is excellent, highly recommend.


	2. Z

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley meets the other inhabitants of this plane of non-existence and gets....frustrated.

            So, the place was connected to Earth, at least in some ways. They could travel along the nothingness, and every now and then, if they concentrated very hard, they could see where they were on the actual plane of existence they were used to. Crowley asked if they could travel to Heaven or Hell, but Ligur said he hadn’t figured it out yet. Moving was ‘different’, here, he said, and he didn’t know how to travel the way they had in between Hell and Earth. Since he’d died on Earth, that was where he had ended up now, ‘thank you very much’.

            “So how _are_ we moving?” Crowley asked. “I—I don’t think this—this body I’m imagining is real. I mean, it’s not really me, is it? It passes right through things.” He concentrated and saw that he was, to illustrate his point, currently walking directly through a line of moving traffic. The cars passed through him one after another and he couldn’t feel a thing. “But we do _have_ to move. We have to put effort into it.” Physical tiredness didn’t seem to exist here, but time did.

            “Dunno,” Ligur said, still walking.

            “Right,” Crowley said, following him. “But—what do you think?”

            “Dunno.”

            “Do you not know, or d’you just not feel like explaining it to me?”

            “Too much effort,” Ligur said.

            Crowley snorted, but he almost couldn’t blame him. Tiredness didn’t exist here, but boredom did. He’d only been here for what felt like a few hours and he was already wishing he had a magazine to read. Ligur had been here for—well, it was best not to think about it. Guilt existed here too. It felt like a stab in the stomach more than the knife actually had, although the latter attempted wound did cancel out _some_ of the effects of the former.

            Once, while they were traveling, Crowley saw a dark shape in the distance.

            “What’s that?” he’d said. Ligur had looked, given a little jump, then turned forward again and moved even faster.

            “Nuthin’.”

            “Ligur—”

            “Do you want to follow me or not?” Ligur had snarled, and Crowley had sighed and shut up, even though he had been fairly certain that the figure had been moving.

            As they walked, Crowley was becoming aware, again, of the ringing sound. The farther they got, the louder it became. Ligur had said they were headed for the Mediterranean, but without corporeal forms they could move much faster than they could have on the actual Earth. They were getting closer.

            Finally, they stopped walking. Crowley glanced at Ligur. He had a look of concentration on his face, like he was trying to see where they were in the world. Crowley almost didn’t bother—it was the only thing that was exhausting here, and he didn’t expect to see much, anyway—but his curiosity got the better of him. He focused.

            They were at the bottom of a shallow sea. An eel swam past his face. Schools of fish drifted past, shimmering so brightly that they shone even in the afterlife haze. A crab scuttled through the place where Crowley’s foot appeared to be.

            Then the world winked out again, and Crowley’s mind reeled from the effort of it all.

            “So—yep,” Ligur was saying. He was concentrating again. His face was screwed up with effort. “Here we are—just—gotta—” A floor came into existence for them to stand on in the nothingness. Apparently if one of them imagined something here, in the dead world, it showed up for both of them, just like their physical appearances did, although Crowley still couldn’t figure out how to summon any objects.

            “ _What_ is that ringing noise?” Crowley said. It was starting to hurt his ears—or the part of his mind that was normally affected by having ears.

            “Oh, that’ll be you.” Ligur sneered at him.

            “What?”

            The other demon held his hand in the air, or rather, the empty space, and all of a sudden he was holding what appeared to be one of those bells that sat on hotel desks waiting to be rung by someone impatient. It was ringing like a fire alarm. Crowley gave it a baffled look.

            Ligur tapped it.

            The ringing stopped, and almost instantly, a dozen figures appeared—human-shaped figures swooping into existence next to them so quickly that Crowley almost screamed again. Ligur chortled at him.

            “ _Here_ you are!” said one of them. “We’ve been looking all _over_ for you.”

            They gathered around Crowley like ducks around a single slice of bread. Ligur was pushed out of the circle. Crowley gaped at them all, trying to figure out whether or not their smiles were the kind he should be worried about.

            “H—wha—” he stammered.

            “Welcome,” they said. One of them said, “You must be Crowley!” and another said “Ow stop pushing me—a whole bloody afterlife and you’re always in my space—” and then another said “Everyone back off! You’re going to scare him to death!” and then he laughed and someone else groaned and said “ _Enough_ with the death jokes, Lehahel!” which struck something deep within Crowley’s memory.

            And then Crowley realized with a jolt that they had wings. Not human-shaped, but angel-shaped. Angels had come first. Interesting that he’d gotten it backwards.

            “Who—Wh—” Crowley continued to say uselessly. Ligur let out a puff of breath in disdain.

            “Welcome,” said one of them, who had stepped forward and swept all the others back with her outstretched arms, “to the afterlife.”

            Crowley gaped at them. They all stared at him. The woman in front smiled reassuringly. She gave a little shrug. “I have to admit, we’re as surprised to see you here as you are.”

            Crowley had to take a minute to get his bearings. There were twelve winged people staring at him, and one off-putting demon leering at him from behind their elbows, and the most unsettling part was, they looked familiar in a way that _they very much shouldn’t_.

            And then Crowley remembered.

            “Lehahel,” he said. Then he looked at the woman in front. “Poiel. You—all of you. You’re—you’re angels, from _before_.”

            “Aw,” said Lehahel. “He remembers us.” The once-angel tilted his head at him. “I’m sorry, but I have absolutely no idea who you are.”

            “But—but, you’re angels—from _before_.” Crowley put his hands to his head. “From before—everything. But you died! But you’re here. And I’m here. Because I’m—” He gave them what was probably, he could sense, a rather pathetic look.

            The twelve angels looked at him curiously. He could name almost each of them. They weren’t names he had thought of in the past six thousand years.

            “You’re the angels who died in the War,” he said.

            “Oh, gosh, _the War_ ,” said Lehahel, in a tone that didn’t match Crowley’s sense of existential awe and dread in the slightest. He grinned at his fellow angels. “I haven’t thought about the War in ages! Remember the War?”

            “Yeah, I _remember_ the War, Lehahel. It was like the first thing that ever happened to us.”

            “I guess it was. Time is weird, isn’t it?”

            “Remember when there wasn’t Time?”

            The angels all shrugged at each other, some scratching their heads, a bit confused.

            “But—how did you get here?” Crowley asked. “Where is here? What is this place? Why do we still exist if we’re dead? You—no one’s heard from any of you in six thousand years! We didn’t look for you.” Crowley felt cold horror well up inside him. “Oh, my g— _someone_. We didn’t _look_ for you.”

            “Eh,” said Poiel. “Don’t worry about it.”

            Crowley’s mouth hung open for a good twenty seconds while he tried to comprehend her reaction.

            “Let bygones be bygones,” another angel said. “It turned out to be a good thing that we moved on to this place. They needed a lot of help.”

            “Help?” Crowley stammered. “Moved on? _They?_ Who—”

            “Oh, yeah. We should probably let them know you’re here.”

            “Oh no,” Ligur said.*

*It was a bad sign for how things were shaping up that Crowley actually felt nervous that Ligur was displeased about what was about to happen.

            Poiel held out her hand, and in it appeared the same bell Ligur had held before. She looked at him. “They’ve updated the design of this again. That must have been you, Ligur?” Then she tapped it.

            It rang.

            Another figure appeared. They landed, for there was no other way to describe their majestic and sudden appearance, on the imaginary plane with a flutter of wings and tapped the bell. It was silenced.

            They looked at Crowley.

            “Oh,” they said. “Another one.”

            “Er—”

            The figure crossed their arms. “Well,” they said. “How did you get here?”

            “Through his own stupidity,” Ligur said. “And with the help of an associate of mine. I knew you’d wanna see ‘im, so I brought him to you. Ta-da!”

            The figure gave him a look with just enough subtle distaste to remain barely polite while also endearing them to Crowley at once. “Yes, thank you, Ligur.”

            “You lot really ought to get better search parties,” Ligur said.

            The twelve angels gently pushed Crowley forward so that he was standing in front of the new person, who was giving him an appraising look. He must have looked pretty pathetic, because their expression softened. “Welcome, Crowley,” they said. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions. I’ll be able to answer most of them, but please be patient. We have a lot to do and I’m sorry to say that you’re rather in our way, but I’m sure that’s not entirely your fault, despite what the other one of you says.” They gestured down at themselves and gave him a smile. “I am Z.”

            “Z,” Crowley repeated.

            “Z,” they said. Not like the letter ‘Z’, pronounced ‘Zee’, but just the very short sound that the letter ‘Z’ makes.

            Crowley frowned. “Your name is just Z?”

            Lehahel laughed, and Poiel nudged him in the ribs.

            “Well,” Z said, a bit testily, “when I was named, there weren’t so many of us. Names could be simpler back then. Then there started to be so many people they had to keep adding more phonetic sounds and—what are they?—‘letters’ to tell everyone apart.”

            “Adding letters?” Crowley felt like his brain was being melted. “People just—just repeat names now.”

            “Yes, and that gets very confusing, doesn’t it?” Z said, raising their voice. “How many ‘Crowley’s are there? Hmm?” They raised their eyebrows at him.

            Crowley made a face. Then he shook himself. “Look, we’re getting off the point. The point is. The point is—“

            “Yes?”

            “The point is _what am I doing here and how do I get out?_ ”

            The twelve angels gave him sympathetic looks. Some sighed. Ligur snorted. Crowley only barely managed not to let out a wail of despair.

            “The answer to the first question will take a bit more time,” Z said. “As for your second—I am afraid there is no ‘getting out.’”

            Crowley felt whatever was left of his spirit wilt. It hit him so hard that he found he barely cared about the first question after all.

            “How much have you told him?” Z was asking the others. They admitted they hadn’t gotten around to explaining much, so Z sighed and started to speak. “Well, you’ve died, and now you’re here—”

            But Crowley couldn’t concentrate.

            This was it. Before he had hardly even understood enough to have a reaction. He’d been so confused at having continued all this—this little thing, called existence, that was _everything_ —that he hadn’t quite comprehended the fact that his _life_ was over yet. The angels around him, Ligur and Z, all faded as his mind focused on all he had lost. What this all meant was that there were so many things, places, and people he could never see again. No more late-night coffees, letting music swirl over you as you gleefully give up any hope of sleep. No more drives in the countryside. He would miss his annoying neighbors, the ducks, and Aziraphale—oh, _someone_ , _Aziraphale_. How could he not be able to go back?

            “—until we’re ready for the next stage. So, you see, there really is no going back.” Z had been talking this whole time. They were giving him a gentle look. Crowley shook his head.

            “Th—that’s—” His voice was low and wavering. “I have to go back.”

            Z frowned. “But I’ve just told you why. Don’t you understand?”

            Crowley looked vaguely back at them. “I? Wasn’t listening. I—what? I, uh, I don’t think I really—”

            “You weren’t listening at all?” Z said.

            “Wait. You said something—something about a next stage?” Crowley tried to drag his consciousness out of his swirling emotions, but it was like trying to pull a giant wet garbage bag out of the ocean. He said, “Huh?”

            The other angels shuffled their feet in sympathetic embarrassment for him. Z crossed their arms. “Goodness. You’re almost worse than he was.”

            They had gestured to Ligur. That snapped Crowley out of it a bit.

            “Sorry. Sorry. Say it again? I promise I’ll listen this time.”

            Z sighed. “I understand that this must be very difficult for you. Apparently, from what we’ve heard from other angels who have died, they were really very convinced that they knew the whole of it. I’m afraid that you very much didn’t.”

            “Yeah, you’re not kidding,” Crowley muttered, and it made him feel a bit more like himself.

            “You see,” Z said, “life on Earth was the first part. And then, there’s all the rest of it.”

            Crowley let those words sink in. They kept sinking. It was quite possible that they sank all the way through him. He blinked. “What?”

            Z smiled. “It’s funny how you all stick to your physical appearances so much. Does manifesting an expression really help you process things? And so many of you choose your human forms instead of your ethereal ones. I was given this image—” they gestured to themselves, “—to greet newcomers and make them feel more comfortable. A familiar image before we move the humans on to the next part. It’s going to be very different, you see. Not so much of the physical form business—a little like it, but, well, different—it’s hard to explain. You’ll just have to see when you get there. Of course, it’s not ready yet. This—this place, if you prefer to call it that—where we are now, is a sort of intermediate stage. A place to cross over. But the next place isn’t ready yet.”

            Purely out of restless energy that comes from trying to understand something, Crowley scratched his head. “Isn’t ready yet? How could it not be ready? We’re—we’re here.”

            “Yes,” Z said, sadly and a bit awkwardly. “But you weren’t supposed to be. No angels were meant to die. Not now.”

            They stood for a moment in silence. Then someone gave an ugly cough.

            “What is it, Ligur?” Z snapped.

            “I told you—” he said.

            “Yes, yes, I know—”

            “We’re demons, not angels.”

            “ _That_ whole business,” Z said. They rolled their eyes, then gave Crowley an apologetic look. “He won’t get over it.”

            “Well, er,” Crowley said, not really wanting to make enemies immediately upon entering a new realm of existence, but continuing to be himself regardless, “he is right.”

            “You might be a ‘demon’,” said one of the angels. “But you’re still an angel. We’re all angels.”   

            “It’s only words, really,” Z said. “You were from before humanity, right? You were angels once?”

            “Yeah, but—but the whole War.” Crowley frowned. “The Fall. It changed everything.”

            “Not everything,” said one of the twelve angels. “Yasariah is still an arse.”

            “Hey!”

            “I wasn’t there,” Z said.

            Crowley blinked. Ligur yawned. Crowley blinked again.

            “You weren’t—”

            “I was already here by then,” Z said, “with the others. We’ve been working on the next place, trying to get it ready.”

            “You weren’t _there_ for the _Fall?_ ” Crowley exclaimed.

            “We had things to _do_ ,” Z said. “So many humans! We have to prepare for them, and of course all of the angels who were still in Heaven. Yes, and you demons, too, the angels who fell. Tell me something I’ve never understood. All of those human souls shuffled off to Heaven to sit there for eternity. You didn’t really think they were going to stay there forever, did you?”

            Crowley stared at them. Ligur looked uncomfortable.

            “Heaven is a place of resting,” Z said. “Not of living. What would be the point?”

            Crowley’s jaw dropped. One corner of Ligur’s mouth curved.

            “You mean to tell me—” Crowley began, his voice growing heated.

            “I told you—” Ligur said.

            “—that Heaven is just a temporary place for human souls to go after they die—”

            “—that he would react this way! Dint I tell you that—”

            “—that it’s just a temporary place for _angels_ , and that after _they_ die—”

            “—I wasn’t overreacting and he would be just the same, or even worse, the bloody snake—”

            “—there’s a whole other world waiting for us and you lot who I’ve never even heard of just happen to run the whole bloody thing _in secret?_ ”

            Z waited for the two of them to catch their metaphorical, spiritual breath. Then they nodded. Crowley groaned.

            “This is too much,” he said. “This is—this is all too much.”

            “Just wait till you’ve been here for a while,” Ligur said. “Then it’ll feel like way too little. This place is _bo-ring_.”

            Z gave him a disapproving look. “It’s not supposed to be entertaining. It’s not supposed to be anything at all. You all weren’t supposed to arrive here until much later. But then there was the whole War. And since then, every now and then some angel—”

            “—or demon—”

            “—gets killed and ends up here, and then we have to entertain them until it’s truly time for the next stage.”

            “Which you don’t.”

            Z glared at Ligur. He scowled back at them.

            “You don’t entertain us at all.”

            “It’s not my fault you went and got murdered.”

            “No.” Ligur gestured to Crowley. “It’s his.”

            Crowley probably didn’t blush or go pale, considering the circumstances, but he certainly felt like he did.

            “He killed me,” Ligur said. “And now we’re trapped here, together! And I am forced to exist next to my murderer, tormented by his presence, until we are ready to move on!”

            “You wanna talk about tormenting presences?” Crowley said through gritted teeth.

            “You’ll just have to get along,” Z said in a matter-of-fact way. “There will be no murdering here. You two think you’re the only ones who killed each other?”

            Crowley and Ligur, who had been glaring at each other, looked back at the angel in a stunned silence.

            “Poiel killed me,” piped up one of the angels. “We’re over it.”

            “The guy who killed me is still up there somewhere. The bastard.”

            “I don’t remember who killed me,” said Lehahel. “That’s awkward.”

            “Most of the angels or demons here,” Z said, crossing their arms, “were killed by one-another. It happens. We move on. Now, can we please move on with this conversation?”

            Crowley’s philosophical mind was having a bit of a breakdown. It was saying things like _Death doesn’t matter—there is life after death—not just for humans, not just Heaven or Hell, but a second life, one for angels and demons and everybody—this is great! This means everything is okay!_ And then, at the same time, _This is awful! Nothing is okay! We’ve all been lied to! I don’t even know what’s coming next, it may be terrible, it may be great but the point is we never knew! Everything we ever did on Earth didn’t matter! Angels and demons murder each other and it doesn’t matter because it all starts over again and it all means_ nothing!

            And to the side of all of that, screaming in anguish, _I WANT TO TELL SOMEBODY!_

            But his rational mind, whatever was left of it, was telling him that this might be his only chance to get answers. He forced himself to nod.

            “Now,” Z said. “A few guidelines about being here. As I’ve said, we really weren’t expecting any angels—or demons—and it’s very important that you let us continue with our work. Most of it is happening in the next place, which you won’t be able to access. The angels who came here before Earth had truly begun have been helping us build it.”

            “It’s going to be amazing,” Poiel said with a grin.

            “However,” Z said sternly, “in the past when we’ve tried to let other angels—or ‘demons’—assist us, they’ve been far too biased based off of their perceptions of Earth life. You won’t be joining us in the next stage yet. But if you go messing around in ways you’re not supposed to, we’ll have to come and set things right, and, well, got to get the next place ready for when all the humans die, don’t we? It wouldn’t do to have them ready to move on without there being anywhere to move on to.”

            “You said the next place is—different?” Crowley asked. “Different as in how? Not a physical place anymore? So is it like an afterlife, like Heaven? Heaven only better? Heaven 2.0?”

            “Even Heaven has a similar appearance to Earth,” Z said. “No, this will be different. Do you remember Before Time?”

            Crowley dug into the deepest recesses of his mind, but the thing was, Before Time he hadn’t had a mind. He shrugged. “Er.”

            “It’ll be a bit like that,” Z said thoughtfully. “Only—different.”

             Ligur groaned and Crowley winced. “This ‘Next Place’ is going to give me a hell of a headache, isn’t it?”

            “Oh, no. You won’t have a head.”

            Ligur cleared his throat, in a way that, had he been a human, would probably have caused him an injury. “Can we please get past the boring parts?”

            “I don’t know what you mean,” Z said, giving him a significant look. “Now, of course, we don’t want you to be bored here. It’ll be quite some time before all of humanity is ready to move on, so I’ll go over a few tips to help you pass the time. One method, chosen by many prematurely dying angels, is to fall into a deep sleep, from which you won’t be awakened until the Time Has Come.”

            Z paused. Neither Crowley nor Ligur said anything. Z sighed.

            “Or—” they said hesitantly.

            “Yeah, you can go on ahead with the ‘or’,” Crowley said.

            “Or you can hang around here,” said one of the twelve angels. “In the intermediate place. There’s not much to do, but you can always think up something. You don’t have a body, but your personality is still here. You can manifest an image of yourself, if you like. I see you’ve figured that out already. Ligur could show you a few more of the basics.”

            Crowley and Ligur scoffed in harmony, which left both of them rather embarrassed.

            “—or I could show you,” Z said resignedly. They held out their hand, and in their palm appeared the same bell that had been ringing before. The sound started again. “This is our alarm,” they said. “It’s for when someone new arrives here. You can see it. But actually, it isn’t there. Nothing is here, in the sense that nothing, here, ‘is’. But it exists in some sense, which is why we can ‘hear ringing’. So, to make this place a little more accessible for people used to living on Earth, we’ve made it so that if you imagine seeing or hearing something, it will appear. In this case, it appears to you like whatever would be used to achieve this effect on Earth.”

            “A bell,” Crowley said.

            “Exactly.”

            “So could we just imagine anything here? Could I imagine, say, a sandwich?”

            “What on Earth is a sandwich?” said Lehahel.

            Crowley sighed. Ligur explained, “It’s food.”

            “Oh. Right.” He shrugged. “Well, no. See, we need an alarm here, something that tells us when someone new has arrived. You don’t need to eat anymore, so you won’t be able to imagine any food here, because there’s no reason it should exist. But whatever exists within your mind can be given a visible form. Emotions, for instance, which is why you can sigh. Or why Ligur can—er—do whatever he’s always doing with his face.”

            “So I can’t imagine myself a deck of cards?” Crowley grumbled.

            “You can imagine anything that helps you process existing in this realm,” Z said. “Including a ground to walk on. If you imagine it, we’ll all be able to see it, just as you can see this physical appearance I made for myself.”

            “And you can do more than see it,” Ligur said.

            “What do you mea—”

            Ligur slapped Crowley in the face.

            “Ow!”

            “You can’t hurt each other,” Z said. And, in contradiction to the fact that they were rubbing their temples, “There’s no physical pain here. But if one of you means to show hostility towards the other, which is something that you can do whether you have a body or not, you can display it in a visible way. All of the pain will be mental, however.”

            “Great,” Crowley said, rubbing his face. “So this is a ‘mental’ injury?”

            “Geeze, Crowley,” Ligur said. “Disconnect yourself entirely from your mental state of health already, like the rest of us, won’t you?”

            “Listen,” Z said. “We really need to be getting back to the construction. If you have any questions, you can find a bell and ring for me, all right? And you can do the same if you change your mind about maintaining your consciousness. I know this isn’t ideal, but try to see the bigger picture. It’s all part of the Plan.”

            Crowley felt rage bubbling up inside him. But before he could throw an absolute fit, Z turned to Ligur.

            “I’ve told him all he needs to know.”

            “You dint tell him—”

            “All he _needs_ to know.” Z’s tone was a warning. “Take care of each other, or leave each other alone. I don’t need any more trouble from you.”

            And then they were gone.

            The other angels said their goodbyes. Crowley was too stunned to respond to any of them. They vanished, one by one, presumably into the next stage of existence. The one into which he was not yet allowed—the one he didn’t even want to see, not even with all his bursting curiosity, because he wasn’t ready, not yet, to leave the other one behind.


	3. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley realizes that something about this 'intermediate' afterlife doesn't add up.

            It was some time later. Crowley assumed time must pass here, since _something_ was certainly drawing his existence out and making it into torture. He wasn’t sure if it had been hours or days. He thought about his plants at home. Would they be wilting yet? Would the Bentley be covered in a layer of city dirt? Had Aziraphale noticed he was gone?

            That hit one of those nerves that had, for eons, triggered a flight response. With nowhere to run to, Crowley simply stood up and started pacing, trying not to think about it.

            Ligur had left after the conversation with Z, saying that he couldn’t stand to look at Crowley’s ‘stupid face’ anymore. Crowley had been wandering the empty plane by himself since then.

            He’d had a song stuck in his head. Funny how that could happen, even after you were dead. He’d always assumed it had been a brain thing, neurons wired a certain way or something, but apparently songs really could get stuck in your very soul.

            So he had been able to conjure up a radio.

            That had at least passed some time. But by the twenty-first go of _A Night at the Opera_ , Crowley had fallen into the depressing state that was not being able to enjoy your favorite music anymore. Plus, listening to a full album gave him some idea of how long he’d been dead, and as the minutes racked up, he hated to know more and more.

            So when Ligur reappeared, he was almost relieved.

            The other demon was holding the knife again. But he didn’t move towards him. He was just staring at him.

            After a moment, he said, “You did this to me.”

            “I’m sorry,” Crowley said, and he meant it.

            Ligur winced. “ _That’s_ not something I ever want to hear.”

            Crowley almost asked, _Then what do you want?_ but he figured he owed him at least the right to be his own emotionally stunted self.

            Ligur gestured to his knife. “This is the second one of these I’ve found,” he said. “Not demon-killin’ knives. Just knives.”

            “Okay.” The demon reminded Crowley oddly of a small child—asking for attention from someone who absolutely did not know how to respond to their strange statements.

            Ligur tossed it in his hand a few times. “I stabbed Z with it once.”

            “You _stabbed them?_ ”

            At that, Ligur grinned. He was immediately transformed into his disgustingly smug self. “Ah, Crowley. Rejoice in the knowledge that not everyone is as cowardly as you.”

            “But you _stabbed_ the angel who has existed in this place no one even knew about since long before the Fall, who would appear to be the master of this entire _realm?_ ” He paused, then said, in a small voice, “Did it hurt them?”

            “Not a bit.”

            But Crowley had already known, as soon as he had asked the question, that he could not possibly kill anyone. Not again. He probably couldn’t even threaten someone. Even if it meant he had to find some other way to get back to the world.

            Because he was _going_ to go back.

            Normally, the thought of losing consciousness until all of his problems had been solved for him would have held great appeal. But something about the thought made him uneasy this time. His mind was all he had, and there was no other part of him that someone could wake up if he’d been gone too long.

            And he thought about who that someone had always been. And he thought about how even if he could have slept till all of his problems were solved, not everyone would be able to do so.

            “Ligur.”

            Ligur had been balancing the knife point on the tip of his nose. “Heh?”

            “There’s something Z’s not telling me. Something you know.”

            Ligur let the knife clatter to the ground and leered at him. “Might be.”

            Crowley tried very hard not to grab him by the shirt and shake him.*

*This was made easier by the fact that Crowley did not at all want to touch him.

            “What is it?”

            “What’s in it for me if I tell you?”

            “What could I _possibly_ give you?” Crowley cried.

            “Mm. Fair point.” Ligur raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you want to know why I _want_ to tell you?”

            “I’m sure it’s something bad,” Crowley said. “I’m sure it’s because you know it’ll give me a panic attack, or make me lose my grip on reality entirely, or something.” Reality was already proving to be more and more like the soap you dropped in the bath anyway.

            “So then why d’you wanna know?”

            Crowley threw his arms out and gestured at the two of them. “I’m bored. I’m losing my mind of boredom. It’s for the same bloody reason you want to be here with me, after I _murdered_ you.”

            Ligur looked at him with what could only be described as ‘compassionate hatred’. He nodded. “Right.” Then he pursed his lips. “In that case, I _won’t_ tell you.”

            “ _What?_ ”

            “It’s a twofold solution to my problem,” Ligur said. “Y’see, the reason I want to be here with you is because I like _torturing_ people, especially when I’m bored. And so I won’t tell you. That way you’ll have to keep asking me and I’ll get to torture you even more.”

            “You wanted to tell me earlier. Now that you know I want you to, you won’t. Must you always play devil’s advo—” And then Crowley sat down and put his head in his hands.

            Ligur walked over to him. He held out the knife. Crowley took it and halfheartedly stabbed himself in the foot. Ligur let out a quiet laugh.

            “All right. I’ll tell you. But just so you’re not too happy about it. Remember, Z did _not_ want me to.”

            “So?”

            “So you might get yourself in trouble.”

            “I _have_ rebelled before, you know,” Crowley said with a scowl.

            “Puh. Hardly.”

            Crowley gave in to his despair—he had already fallen pretty low, anyway—and said, “ _Please_ , Ligur.”

            “Aha! The infamous tempter is succumbing to _my_ temptation, now, eh?”

            “You’ve gone creepy now, Ligur.”

            “Right. Sorry.” Ligur stepped back from the still-prone Crowley and spread his arms. “Watch and learn,” he said. Then he scrunched up his face and balled up his fists.

            “Er,” Crowley said.

            “Focus.”

            “Oh. Right.” Crowley focused.

            The world came back—fuzzy, gray, but the world nonetheless. They appeared to be somewhere in the Belgian countryside.

            “I already knew about this,” Crowley said. “When I first died I saw the room I'd been in before.”

            “You knew. But did you notice how Z didn’t mention it?” Ligur raised his eyebrows at him. “And didja think about what it _means?_ ”

            Crowley stared at the demon, so out of place standing in the field of waving grass. He felt something welling up inside of him.

            “That knife,” he said. “You didn’t imagine that. You said you got it off of my dead body.”

            “That I did, snake.”

            “But my corporation was in the real world.” Crowley looked around them. “The world we can see.” The world they could _still see_.

            The thing growing inside him was starting to overwhelm him. It was some kind of emotion. For a moment, he worried he might start to cry.

            He said, “I want to go home.”

            “Can’t,” Ligur said. “I already told you. There’s no way to get to Hell from here.”

            “Not _Hell_ ,” Crowley said, with just enough vitriol to safely cover up the very unnecessary but nevertheless emotionally obvious lump that had formed in his nonexistent throat. “To my flat. In London.” That hadn’t been what he had meant either, but it was closer. Maybe close enough to make a difference.

            “You can’t _do_ anything,” Ligur said, as though reading his thoughts. “You won’t be able to find any secret doors back to the real world, or send any messages, or anything.”

            Maybe he really _was_ reading his thoughts. Crowley squirmed. “I know.”

            “You don’t know nuthin’,” Ligur said darkly.

            Crowley let out a puff of air. “Why did you tell me? What was it that was so bad, then? The fact that you knew I’d have hope for a second, only for you to take it away? You should have held out for longer, you know.”

            “S’not that,” Ligur said. He said, quietly, “I just wanted you to know that you can watch them.”

            Crowley froze. He wondered if he had imagined the slight pain in Ligur’s voice, or if he was just projecting, and if that had just been malice as always. He asked, “Watch who?”

            Ligur shrugged one shoulder. “Y’know. Whoever.”

            Crowley stared at him out of the corner of his eye. Then he walked over to him and looked him directly in the face. He said, thoughtfully, “Who do _you_ watch?”

            Ligur didn’t budge.

            Crowley laughed. “Hold on. You said you _knew_ Hastur was going to get revenge on me. You knew, Ligur? What is it, pray tell, that made you think he’d care so much?”

            Ligur’s face twisted into a snarl. He hissed, “Don’t think I don’t know who _you_ watch, serpent. You want to know who I watch? I’ve been watching _you_. I know where you _really_ want to go.”

            Crowley took a step back. He wondered what that meant in this world made up of metaphors. He moved his very spirit farther away from the other demon. But he also couldn’t look away from his face.

            “And watch is all you can do,” Ligur said. His voice was rough with hatred. “Watch him live on, without you.”

            Crowley’s old instincts were kicking in. Even in death, you remained yourself. He said, “I really don’t know what you—”

            “ _Save_ it, Crowley. We’re already dead. What more could the truth of your despicable self cause to happen to you now?”

            Crowley wavered for a moment. Then he put his head in his hands. He shook it slowly, trying to regulate his breathing. Trying not to sob.

            Ligur waited. Then he gripped Crowley’s shoulder. A bit too tightly.

            Crowley looked up at him. Ligur was wearing his malicious grin. It looked a bit forced, but then, Ligur’s smile always did.

            “C’mon.”

            “No—”

            “ _Come on_.”

            Ligur tightened his grip until it hurt. Crowley pulled himself away. As soon as he’d felt the pain, it had stopped, as though once he realized it was only in his head, Ligur couldn’t hurt him anymore. But that wasn’t entirely true.

            “If you don’t _go_ ,” Ligur said, “you’ll always _wonder_.”

            “I can take it,” Crowley said. “I’ve wondered plenty. Wondering’s my thing. Just sitting around in clueless agony for eons. You think you’ve had it bad? You accepted what Hell told you was up and down. Try living in _my_ head.”

            “Try being _dead_ in _mine_ ,” Ligur snarled. “For so long! No, Crowley. You’re seeing him. You did this to me and if you think you can just get away with it without punishment, you’ve got another think coming—”

            “What will you get out of this, Ligur?” Crowley exclaimed. “Can’t you give the whole torture thing a break for once? That’s not what we were, you know, not really! Demons weren’t even evil at first, we were just the ones who made a mistake, the ones who fell—”

            “How dare you call our choice a mistake—”

            “—and the whole _torture_ thing was just something humans made up to scare each other away from Hell, and you fell for it! You let them make you!”

            “ _You’re_ the one who’s always fawning over humans! You’re the one who wishes you was like them!” Ligur pointed a crooked finger at him. “That’s what’s got you into this mess in the first place! If you hadn’t gone and got attached, you wouldn’t be tryn’ to be someone you’re not all the time, you’d accept your place, and you’d’ve gone along with the plan! You’d’ve worked with us instead of betraying us and killin’ me, and then Hastur wouldn’ve had to kill you, and we’d both be living in a victorious Hell by now! Then you go an’ get attached to an angel, of all things, and now you’re about to cry your eyes out over—”

            “Wait—”

            “—him and you’ve given me the power to do that! You’ve made it so easy for me, Crowley! An absolute nightmare, your precious little _feelings_ are, and you’ve walked right into _me!_ ”

            Ligur was grinning feverishly now, entirely wrapped up in his rant, but Crowley was hardly paying attention. His thoughts had gone somewhere else entirely.

            “Me, master of pain! Seeker of revenge! The one person who you thought you had defeated, but here you are, in my power, and I know all of your secrets! Bow before me, but know that there is no hope for mercy!”

            “Ligur, shut up for a second.”

            Ligur deflated like a popped balloon.

            “Sorry to interrupt your moment of grandeur,” Crowley said, “but are you listening to yourself?”

            “No.” Ligur pouted. “You told me to shuddup.”

            “But I mean, did you hear what you were saying? About Hell, and the War, and—and the Plan. Don’t you remember the Plan?”

            “Course I remember the Plan. The one you bungled.”

            “But it was supposed to happen.” Crowley ran a hand through his hair, his eyes wide and staring off into the distance. “It was supposed to. But then—”

            He started clawing at the air furiously.

            Ligur tilted his head and stared at him. “Er—hey,” he said. “Hey! No fair, it’s no fun gettin’ revenge on you if you’re already loony!”

            The real world had vanished and Crowley was in the afterlife again. He held out his palm and glared at it so hard his spirit-brain hurt.

            “What are you—”

            “The thing, how do you get the thing?”

            “The wha?”

            “The bell thing! I need a bell!”

            “Oh.” Ligur held out his hand. The hotel-desk bell appeared in it. “Like this one?”

            Crowley ran over to him and tapped it.

            Instantly, Z appeared.

            “Hello!” they said. “I’m glad to see you’ve discovered how to contact us. I’m assuming it’s for something we can do for you. Say, for instance, have you reconsidered your decision about letting us put you into a trance-like state until the end of—”

            “The end of times!” Crowley practically yelled. “The End! Capital ‘E’ Endtimes! They were supposed to happen, weren’t they?”

            Z frowned and blinked at him. “Er—well, technically, even I don’t know if there will ever be a real end to _all_ things, but eventually Earth’s time will run out and all of humanity will reconvene here to be transported to the next—”

            “The next place, yeah, I get that.” Crowley started pacing. “But you said I wasn’t supposed to be here. You said no angels were! And you said humans will only be moved to the next place when all of them have died, but you said the next place isn’t ready yet, so you can’t’ve been expecting that soon. Much less _already_. So tell me—” Crowley grinned manically at them. “Why was there supposed to be a War?”

            Z didn’t say a word. They didn’t, in fact, look guilty, like he had expected, or resigned to his having discovered some great secret, or displeased at all. They simply looked confused.

            Ligur, however, gave the gigantic gasp that lived up to Crowley’s expectations of what his revelation should inspire in others. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying, coming from him, but it was something.

            Z said, simply, “I beg your pardon?”

            “The War.” Crowley made a face. “Y’know. _The_ War. Part of the big Ineffable Plan.”

            “The War between Hell and Heaven,” Ligur added, when Z still looked nonplussed. “Well, the second one. The one where Hell defeats the rotten angels at last and lives on in its victorious—”

            “The one where _all of Earth is destroyed_ ,” Crowley interrupted. “Armageddon. The Apocalypse. The Sky Is Falling. Every single human, dead, and probably a hell of a lot of angels and demons, too. It was supposed to have happened already.”

            Z frowned. “And who told you that?”

            Crowley felt that ice-in-your-veins feeling creeping up on him again. Ligur looked indignant.

            “Almost everyone,” he said. “Everyone. Only this little shit went and helped the humans stop it.”

            Crowley gave Z a questioning look. They shook their head at him. He felt like he was sinking, further and further.

            “I don’t know,” they said. “I only know, the next world is not ready yet. Humanity wasn’t _supposed_ to die. At least, not by my calendar.”

            Crowley slowly raised a hand to his head and looked down.

            “I don’t know what else to tell you. We’re right on schedule. I don’t know why they do or don’t tell you guys things. That’s not my job.” Then Z’s voice became more optimistic. “But shouldn’t you be happy about that? After all, it sounds like you’re one of the ones who helped Earth stay around for a bit longer. Thanks for that, by the way. Although I’m sure it wouldn’t really have ended, just because some angels and demons wanted it to. Not since it wasn’t really ready. But shouldn’t you be relieved you weren’t doing the wrong thing, and aren’t you glad it’s still around, if you liked it?”

            “’Cept we’re not in it anymore,” Ligur grumbled.

            Crowley shook his head. He tried to close his eyes. But since he wasn’t really here, it was almost impossible for him to stop being aware of everything, to shut it all out. Almost impossible, unless he let Z put him to sleep.

            “It’s not that,” he said, tired. “It’s just—that means we didn’t really win anything after all. We didn’t fight back.” He almost managed to make the world go out of focus on his own. “It means we just went along with the plan, the Real Plan, all along. Like the puppets we are, I suppose.”

            The other two were quiet for a while. Then he heard Ligur whispering to Z, “He’s sad cause he dint get to rebel. Demons like to rebel. It’s kind of our thing.”

            “It’s not because I’m a demon,” Crowley snapped, focusing again so he could glare at them. “It’s because—” He sighed. “Because that means I didn’t really _do_ anything at all. Just what I was meant to.” Not because he _could_. Which meant maybe, he had never been capable of choosing his own way of living, after all.

            “You just did what you were s’posed to,” Ligur said. He sounded almost as though he understood. “Which means that I didn’t. I actually _was_ a rebel!”

            “Or maybe the whole thing was planned this whole time,” Crowley said bitterly. “The War almost happening, and then not happening.” _Did it all mean nothing? Was any of it_ real?

            Z walked over to Crowley and put their hand on his shoulder. He flinched.

            “If it makes you feel any better,” they said, “you weren’t doing what you were supposed to do when you died.”

            Crowley backed away from them. “Great,” he said. “Thanks, and all that. Yeah. Listen. I’m just gonna—” He looked around the vast expanse of death and gave a short sigh. “Disappear, for a while. Get my bearings, and all that. Adjust to this new non-life, you know?”

            “Okay.” Z looked disappointed. “If you change your mind—or need anything—” They held out the bell. “You know how to call.”

            Then they and the bell vanished.

            Crowley stared at emptiness.

            Ligur turned to him. Crowley walked away before he could start to speak.


	4. Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley makes a visit and discovers that the worlds of the living and the dead are more connected than he thought, and more than Z would like him to know.

            Crowley had conjured up a radio again. He’d been going through the albums, but, as if through cosmic interference, certain songs kept playing over and over. Every now and then he would close his eyes and open them again, and he would see the world the way it was. He was at the bottom of the Channel. He knew, really, that this said something about him. He would wander through the waste without a thought in his head but still cosmic interference occurred. His direction was irrevocable, like there was a magnet pulling him somewhere. Pulling him home.

            “ _Bring it back, bring it back—_ ”

            It was the third time “Love of My Life” had played. Crowley let his head roll back and stared up above him. Even when he could see the world, it was hard to see the sky—it was as though the Earth were fading into grey fuzz the farther up it got from the ground. At least at the bottom of the sea there were fish before everything turned to dust.

            He had conjured up the bell a few times too. He could finally do that now, but he still hadn’t rung it.

            He tilted his head back downward suddenly, aware of a presence.

            It was Ligur. He was glaring at him. The demon said, with a tone of foreboding, “You’ll go and see him eventually.”

            Crowley slapped the radio off—the song kept playing, stuck in his head, after all—and stalked over to him. “ _Stop_ trying to get your revenge on me,” he snapped. “You’ve put me through a whole new kind of Hell, congratulations. And how did you know, anyway? I—I didn’t know you could even _understand_ this kind of thing. So where’d you learn, huh? Where did you learn what missing someone feels like?”

            Ligur’s eyes flashed. The sea darkened, and Crowley wondered if the other demon had imagined the darkness into being. He glowered at him. “Don’t you dare,” he said between clenched teeth, “try to psychoanalyze me. You think you know things, Crowley? You think you can figure me out? That’s all you do, you and that angel, yabbering on like you’ve got somethin’ to say. I ain’t like you, snake. I don’t have _friends_.”

            “Yeah, Ligur. That’s why you’ve only mentioned one other person’s name the entire time we’ve been here. That’s why you were so convinced a work colleague was going to _murder_ me because of you. That’s why—”

            Ligur covered his ears and snarled “You think everyone is just like you and that’s why you can never understand anything or anyone—”

            “—you look sad whenever you think about the life you left behind even though it was literal Hell, Ligur! Literal, actual Hell, and you didn’t avoid the bad parts like most demons do, you didn’t follow a ‘don’t take your work home with you’ mantra, you soaked it all up, this idea that demons _like_ pain. But you’re just another once-angel, Ligur, you’re just like me! We all are! We all exist and we all feel pain and if you _miss_ someone _that means that you_ —”

            Ligur swung at him. Crowley ducked, shuffling backwards. Ligur hurled a fist towards him again, and as Crowley dodged, he noticed something behind Ligur’s shoulder. He backed away from him and pointed. “What. What is that.”

            “Ha, like I’m gonna fall for that—”

            “No seriously, Ligur, it’s one of those shadows again. What are those?”

            Ligur turned around.

            The shadow was moving closer. Crowley blinked out of the material world and saw that it existed in the afterlife too. It was shaped almost like a person.

            Ligur scowled. He almost looked nervous. He spun around and started walking the other way.

            “What—”

            “Shuddup,” Ligur said, pushing past him, and then he started to gain speed, in the weird way that people could on this plane, and then he was gone.

            Crowley waited a moment, looking at the shadow.

            Then he turned and ran.

 

            More time. Crowley hadn’t seen the angels or Z anymore since the first time he’d met them. They must be busy working on the entire new plane of existence which he was forbidden to enter.

            They were certainly taking a lot longer than seven days.

            He’d started to watch the sun set every night, though it took all his concentration and will. He had been counting the days.

            By the cliffs of Dover, where there was only white stone, he thought of his plants. The leaves would have turned brown and started curling at the edges. He wondered if, once the angel knew for sure that he wasn’t coming back, he would think to go and care for them.

            That did it.

            He stood up and started walking.

 

            Space was different here too—because you could move more quickly than physically possible, you could see farther than you could have in the real world as well. Plus, when Crowley blinked and let London fade before his eyes, there were no more buildings in his way. Across London, but clearly visible, a person was walking through the afterlife.

            “I should have known,” Crowley said, speeding through the purely symbolic space and appearing beside Ligur so suddenly that, to his satisfaction, he nearly gave the other demon a heart attack.

            “Bloody—”

            “You weren’t content to stalk me while I was still living?” Crowley asked. “You have to stalk me in the afterlife, too?”

            “I wasn’t following you,” Ligur said.

            “Mmhm.”

            “I wasn’t this time!”

            “You just happened to be in London?”

            At that, Ligur looked just evasive enough that Crowley actually believed him.

            “Oh,” he said. “Right. Anyone _else_ been hanging around London lately?”

            “’S’a big place,” Ligur mumbled. “Lotsa people.” His tone changed as he glanced at Crowley out of the side of his eye and one corner of his mouth lifted unpleasantly. “You going to see that angel?”

            Crowley said nothing.

            “Right then,” Ligur said, in an oddly chipper mood. “Let’s go.”

            “I don’t want you going _with me_ ,” Crowley whined.

            “I don’t care what you want.”

            “Ugh.”

            “Y’know, it’s funny, really. If you was a proper demon, you wouldn’t feel so guilty ‘bout killing me, and you wouldn’t let me do whatever I wanted.”

            “But then I’d be _like_ you. You have to make sacrifices sometimes.”

            Crowley let Ligur jabber at him the whole way to the shop. It was almost nice having a distraction. Every time he looked into the world and saw that he was closer, he felt something in his spirit like his heart almost stopping. He wondered, since it wasn’t a physical heart, what it really was.

            “—then one of the other dead guys says to stop callin’ him a demon cause he says it’s offensive to ‘im,” Ligur was saying. “And I says, ‘It’s not offensive because you are a demon, you told me you fought against Heaven so you would’ve fallen if you hadn’t’ve died, and anyway demons like being offensive’, and now that’s why most of them won’t talk to me anymore.”

            Crowley took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them he was in the world.

            The bookshop.

            Ligur walked up to the front door and tapped on the glass, which didn’t, of course, make a sound. He pointed to the sign. “It’s closed. Oh well. Better come back another day.”

            Crowley walked right past him and through the closed door without pausing.

            “Oh. Right.” And Ligur followed.

            The whole time he had been dead, the world had seemed out of focus, lacking in color and detail. The inside of the book shop was crystal clear. Every detail was so exact that Crowley almost wondered if it wasn’t just his own memory, but the books had been moved around since the last time he had seen them, just as Aziraphale tended to do once every few weeks, and there were muddy footprints on the floor, something he never would have imagined, so they must have been real. The angel was getting sloppy. Dust motes floating through the air, and Crowley, so grateful that he could see something so mundane and so real for the first time in ages, almost teared up at the sight of them.

            Ligur was mercifully quiet for once, and Crowley walked through the maze of bookcases until he reached the back, where he knew there would be a desk, and, possibly, someone sitting there.

            Aziraphale was there, reading. The sheer familiarity of the image sent a jolt through Crowley like lightning. There was a tune playing quietly in the background, and the angel was sitting amidst the books and the dust as though time hadn’t passed at all, and Crowley had never, never in his whole existence, wanted to go backwards in time as much as he did then.

            Ligur stood next to him and they watched him for a while. Not one of the three of them moved. Then Crowley recognized the music.          

            The same music he had been listening to on his way here, the same he had for days.

            He took a step back, stunned. Ligur gave him a quizzical look.

            “He’s listening to Queen.”

            “I din’t know the Queen of England worked for Heaven.”

            “No—Ligur, you said you’ve been watching me for ages, you should know what Queen is. They’re the music I listen to all the time.”

            Ligur scrunched up his nose and said, “I thought you were listening to Vivaldi.”

            Crowley was watching Aziraphale intently. The angel was staring at the page and he hadn’t turned it in a while, and he had definitely used to read faster than that.

            Crowley said, “He misses me.”

            Next to him, Ligur shrugged. “Yeah? Of course.”

            Crowley looked at him, the demon who probably had the least understanding of empathy out of anyone in the world. The demon who had been watching him. Him and Aziraphale.

            And he had said, ‘Of course.’

            The radio sang, “ _Because you don’t know what it means to me._ ”

            Crowley walked quickly over to Aziraphale’s side and looked down at the book. He hadn’t turned a page the entire time they’d been there. They stood for a while longer, and eventually the angel sniffed. He put a hand to his head. He looked exhausted, his eyes glassy.

            “Aziraphale.”

            At once the angel looked up, wistful, as though he could almost hear him.

            “Oh, my S—Aziraphale.” Crowley reached out his hand and touched him on the shoulder.

            Aziraphale immediately burst into tears.

            “Ohshit,” Crowley said. He flittered around the sobbing angel as though looking for a way to turn off the water faucet. “Oh shit, oh shit. Sorry, angel!”

            “Nice going,” Ligur laughed.

            Crowley glared at him. He took a few steps back from Aziraphale, and that seemed to calm the angel down. He turned to the other demon in despair.

            “Yeah,” Ligur grunted, leaning* on one of the bookshelves. “Touching them sort of gets their attention, but not in the best way.”

 *Or attempting to lean—it was technically impossible, and he should have gone right through it. But Crowley wasn’t the only demon who had adopted certain postures from ‘cool’ humans.

            “Well,” Crowley said, piqued by the satisfied look on Ligur’s face and looking for a way to get him back, “what did Hastur do when _you_ — _touched_ —him? Shed a single tear?”

            “Don’t be absurd,” Ligur said. He forced himself to sound more chill when he added, with a wicked grin, “He went berserk and smashed a lot of stuff.”

            “Charming.”

            Ligur leaned back with a proud and somewhat dreamy gleam in his eye. “Yeah.”

            Crowley huffed and leaned over Aziraphale’s book, careful not to touch the angel, who was wiping his eyes with a handkerchief that was at least a hundred years old. He frowned. “He’s reading _physics_.”

            “I’m already bored.”

            “So is he, probably. He never cared about physics before. He always said, whenever I tried to tell him about some new scientific discovery, ‘I was there when the world was made, I don’t need to study the clockwork of the whole thing.’ He’d say something like ‘It ruins ineffability’ but really I think he just didn’t want to admit he was never one for understanding the mechanics of things.”

            “So, he’s dumb. You were always falling head over heels for him when I watched you in life, not criticizing him. You’re not getting over him, are you?”

            “He’s not dumb,” Crowley snapped. “He’s brilliant! Look, this entire stack of books is about physics.”

            “He hasn’t turned the page the whole time we’ve been here,” Ligur said. “You sure he’s smart?”

            “He’s been _crying_.”

            “ _That_ doesn’t sound all that clever.”

            “Useless, talking to you,” Crowley said. He examined the books. They weren’t just about physics. They were _theoretical_. Abstract stuff, too. All about movement and time, and whether it was linear or cyclical, or—

            Crowley grew so excited that he tried to turn the page without remembering that he couldn’t. He ran his hand through it, and the paper ruffled a little, as though hit by a gust of air. Aziraphale was still dabbing his eyes and didn’t notice.

            Crowley grinned. “Oh, bloody _hell_.”

            “What?” Ligur said.

            Crowley’s grin was positively manic now. He flapped his hand at the open book. “He’s—he’s—he’s studying bloody _time travel_.”

            Ligur squinted at him. “So glad I spent all that time dead watching you two’s every asinine conversation,” he said. “So’s I can end up here, now, with no bloody idea what you’re talking about.”

            “Ligur. I killed you. Hastur killed me. You knew he would cause his way of dealing with loss is to get revenge and do a bunch of violent stuff, right?”

            Ligur blinked at him.

            “I died,” Crowley said. “Aziraphale is studying how to _manipulate time_.”

            Ligur started to grin. Crowley realized he had never actually seen the demon grin like that before because he had never before seen exactly what his teeth looked like. It was a disturbing sight, but still not enough to get him down.

            He felt elated.

            He turned back to Aziraphale, who had put away his handkerchief and was staring at the page with more determination than ever. And he almost hugged him, but he was stopped by the fear of making the poor angel have a breakdown again, plus there was something else, an instinct that had kept him from touching him in such a way for so many years, and now he realized it was such a waste, _such_ a waste, and now it was too late—only maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the angel was onto something. And not just onto whatever theory he was studying now, but simply the idea that they _could_ try, the fact that they could, always, _of course_ , try.

            Crowley was feeling like himself again for the first time in a very long while.

            He spun around and Ligur held up his hands in defense.

            “But this means we can interact with them,” Crowley said. “At least a little? If we can make them cry, anyway. The actions we take, they can actually affect their world? Affecting people beyond the afterlife—” And then Crowley thought of something else.

            Ligur was waving his hand back and forth in front of Aziraphale’s face. The angel looked confused and very irritated. Crowley grabbed the demon’s hand.

            “Those figures. The shadows I keep seeing, in the afterlife. What are they?”

            “Ugh. I don’t wanna tell you.”

            “Why not?”

            “Cause you’ll go and do something stupid, like try and talk to them.”

            “Ligur—”

            “Fine.” Ligur rolled his eyes. “They’re dead people.”

            Crowley blinked.

            “Yeah, yeah,” Ligur said. “Your conspiracy theories were true. Ghosts are real. Congratulations.”

            “There are ghosts in our world? Why didn’t you tell me?”

            “I don’t wanna talk to _humans_ ,” Ligur said with a wrinkled nose.

            “You mean to say that you could have been asking actual ghosts how they interact with the Earth world this whole time and you didn’t because you’ve been too—too— _antisocial?_ ”

            Crowley didn’t wait for him to respond. He let the book shop vanish from his view and started moving, not any particular direction, just away. Ligur followed.

            “Woah woah wait, you’re not even gonna pine over him in agony while I watch on in glee? Not even a little?”

            “I need to talk to Z,” Crowley said, finally stopping. “And I—I don’t want them knowing I went there.” He wasn’t sure why yet. Maybe it was just his old habit of keeping certain things secret, but maybe it was because he was starting to get ideas. And dead or not, Crowley’s ideas were _definitely_ something he should _always_ keep secret.

            He held out the bell and rang it.

            Instead of Z, three of the angels appeared. Poiel smiled at him and said, “Hello, Crowley! I assume you would like us to assist you with some question pertaining to the afterli—”

            “There are _ghosts_ here,” Crowley said. Poiel blinked. Crowley frowned in thought. “I was going to talk to Z, but, no, this is better. I have a feeling they won’t tell me anything. But you will, right? You wouldn’t lie? An angel wouldn’t lie?”*

*Crowley knew Aziraphale, and knew that this was nonsense. But he also, from having known Aziraphale, knew that if you said this to an angel, it increased your chances of getting the truth a hundredfold.

            “That’s no good,” said Lehahel. “According to this Ligur guy, if Poiel hadn’t died, she would’ve been a demon.”

            “You would have fallen?” Crowley asked, a bit awed.

            “What? No I wouldn’t have!” Poiel glared at Lehahel. “I was on the _right_ side of the War!”

            “Oh. Were you?”

            “How could you tell?” Yasariah said, raising an eyebrow.

            “Because I was _right_ , that’s how!”

            “Which side were you arguing for? Crowley’s a demon, so he can tell us whether you would’ve fallen or not.”

            “The other angels were saying all these wrong things about how Heaven should be run,” Poiel said. “And I was telling them that Heaven definitely should not be run like that.”

            The three angels turned to Crowley. He gave an awkward smile.

            “Er,” he said, “do you remember if you were with the group that started the rebellion, or the side fighting against them?”

            “All I remember is people were fighting, so I went out and fought too.”

            “Oy, Crowley,” Ligur piped up. “Didn’t you have something you wanted to ask them?”

            “Right!” Crowley pointed a finger at them and hoped that these beings who had barely existed within the time frame of humans also existing would understand that the gesture meant he was determined to be taken seriously. “Tell me about these ghosts.”

            Poiel’s brow creased. “What are ‘ghosts’?”

            “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what ghosts are,” Lehahel scoffed. He said to Crowley, “The other angels and demons who’ve died, they told us all about how they look from the other side. It’s one of the reasons so many of them want to be put to sleep. They go, ‘I don’t want to end up like a ghost!’”

            “Z told us not to tell,” Poiel hissed.

            “So if you stay here for ages,” Crowley said, “you really lose your mind and start acting like a stereotypical ghost? Just like in the movies?” He thought about all the horror films he had seen about hauntings, ghosts stuck reliving the same paths they took in their lives, repeating the same motions over and over, with nothing but thoughts of revenge in their heads, killing anyone who got in their way.

            “You mean do people who’ve been here for a long time start hanging around the same old spots, groaning in boredom and pacing and knocking over stuff just to mess with the humans who are still living there?”

            Ligur laughed. Crowley said, “Oh.” Then he said, “But wait. Why are there ghosts? You said there weren’t any humans here.”

            The angels looked a bit sheepish.

            “Well,” said Poiel, “most humans who die go either to Heaven or Hell.”

            “Right.”

            “Their souls are preserved and they’re taken there. But—well—” She sighed. “Sometimes people die in such a heinous way—or so suddenly, a death that shocks them to their very soul—they don’t hear the call to go to Heaven. Or Hell. And human souls were made with the intention that they would come here eventually. If they die so suddenly and violently that their souls are stricken to the Earth and remain there even after their bodies are dead—well, they end up here.”

            “In this other plane,” Crowley said. “That lies directly parallel to Earth, but not for the living to see.”

            “Exactly.”

            “So what you’re saying,” Crowley said, wincing and rubbing his forehead, “—is they get here if—if they, like, super-died? They died—really _hard_.”

            Lehahel laughed, and Yasariah said, “Yeah.”

            Crowley nodded. He kept nodding. Then he stopped, because he didn’t want to look like he was thinking of something, although he most certainly was. He shrugged and smiled at the angels. He said, “Weird. Well, thanks for letting me know. Just wanted to make sure I’m not, y’know, seeing things, after the shock of having died and all.”

            He started to casually back away.*

*‘The serpent was the most subtil of beasts.’

            The angels watched him go.

            “That’s about it,” Crowley said. “Thanks again. Er, see you later.”

            “All right,” Poiel said. “Bye!”

            And the angels vanished.

            Crowley spun around to face Ligur.*

*Who had been backing up in pace with him, giving him very confused and uncertain glances the whole time, which Crowley had been ignoring. For the sake of subtlety.

            “This is it,” he said. “This is how we get out.”

            Ligur grinned. “Yeah! All right. Er. How?”

            “If this is where ghosts come from, then we can _become_ ghosts. Ghosts can haunt people. They can _interact with people_.”

            “So?”

            “So,” Crowley said, grinning, “we can get help.”

            Ligur had a face like something smelled bad. “From who?”

            Crowley raised his eyebrows. He was beaming.

            Ligur groaned. “From them? Oh, come on! They’re not gonna be able to help us. What’ll we do, make a room go cold and make ‘oooOOooh’ noises? They won’t even know it’s us!”

            “Haven’t you ever watched a horror film, Ligur?” Crowley said, already on the move so that the other demon could hardly keep up. “I’d’ve thought it was right up your alley. Ghosts can do more than that.”

            “Huh. So—we’re gonna haunt them?”

            “Yep. And don’t worry. Hastur’ll know it’s you.”

            “What makes you think so?”

            “You’re on the top of his mind. You’ll be the first person he’ll think of. Just like you knew I was talking about him before I even said his name.”

            Ligur positively scowled at Crowley. Crowley ignored him.


	5. 'L'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghosts and hauntings! Crowley and Ligur visit an old friend and an even older stranger.

            It took them a while to find a ghost, but compared to the aimless roaming Crowley had been doing ever since he’d died, it felt like no time at all. He’d finally had the bright idea to try a place where ghosts were commonly found on Earth. A few minutes later they were walking through a blurred afterlife-version of the ruins of a seventeenth-century manor in Europe.

            “So this is a most-likely-to-be-haunted kinda place?” Ligur asked.

            “It’s either this or some abandoned farmstead in a field somewhere, but I’m not going all the way to America.”

            They searched the ruins for a while, and then this time Ligur had the bright idea, which was to leave the visible Earth world and just look to see if there were any figures standing around in the empty death plane nearby. They found a woman in a flowing white dress a few moments later.

            “This is perfect,” Crowley said. “Peak ghost attire. I’ll bet she’s an expert at haunting.”

            They approached her from behind, then Crowley greeted her, and she spun around so quickly it made _him_ dizzy.

            “Oh, Zounds,” the woman said after having given a little jump. “Not you.”

            “Hello,” Crowley said winningly. “Are you perhaps a Ghostly Weeping Bride, or some such phantom?”

            “A bride I mote be,” she answered, “but I wote not that thus hight I be. ‘Weeping’? ‘Groning with furious rage fyred,’ more like.”

            Crowley grinned. “Excellent. We were wondering if you wouldn’t mind helping us with something.”

            She furrowed her brow. “Be ye of those wingèd foule recreantes?”

            Crowley glanced at himself and Ligur. Neither of them had imagined themselves with wings. “Er—”

            “We’re not with them,” Ligur said.

            The woman smiled. “Then ask what ye would.”

            They talked with her about what it was like being a ghost, how she had ended up there and what she had been doing since. After dying on her wedding day, she had mostly spent the rest of the past five-hundred years drifting around her manor, watching the people come and go until it sank into decay, occasionally scaring away any visitors who tried to graffiti the stones.

            Crowley was getting depressed.

            “So you do scare them?” he said. “You do haunt people?”

            “Aye, once a man woxe so affrayd he did ronne ere I woxe tyred, and I had not beene tyred these past fiue-hundred years.”

            “So you can leave this place. But why do you stay here so long?”

            She cast a sad look around the ruins. “Memorie. She giveth places colour. I haue seene other lands but they do fade and wither.”

            “But this place doesn’t,” Crowley murmured. “Because you remember it. Because it was important to you. That’s why the bookshop was so clear to me.”

            The woman nodded. She told them how she was able to impact the living world—mostly through rage and, in more honest terms, pure annoyance at having been bored and alone for five-hundred years—and how she had haunted the visitors of her manor for many years, blowing out their candles or screaming at them or, the most difficult but more rewarding haunt, rearranging their belongings bit by agonizing bit until they spell out an ominous message.

            “I miss the good old days,” Ligur said. “People were much cleverer in the middle ages.”

            “But why don’t you do _more?_ ” Crowley said. “When you first died, why didn’t you tell someone you were still around? Why not _talk_ to someone who comes to visit your manor instead of scaring them all away? Why not—make a friend? _Something_ to help you pass the time? At least living humans can still come up with new things to _say_.”

            The woman’s face grew dark. “I have nought but a moment before I am discouered.”

            “Discovered? By—by humans? What can they do to you?”

            “The one hight Z,” the ghost said. “They listen, and when we dare to speake too long or too loud, they hear. We are forbidden from speaking with the other world.”

            Crowley looked down at the ground.

            Ligur crossed his arms and groaned. “Of course we are. Forbidden from every bloody thing in this place.”

            “So—if you interact with the living world for more than a few moments—?” Crowley said. The woman nodded. Crowley sighed.

            “Z comes and gets on your case.”

            The ghost bride nodded sadly. Crowley felt cold. He felt like letting the whole world go cold with him. He was beginning to understand the desire to act the way ghosts do.

 

            Crowley and Ligur left her to her roaming of the moors around her once-home. Crowley didn’t even have the energy to shoo the other demon away. He hovered around him while Crowley sank further and further into a pit of despair.

            “Oy.”

            Crowley blinked up at Ligur. He realized he had created an actual pit on the imagined plane of existence. It was getting bigger and bigger, so wide that Ligur was almost falling into it with him.

            Crowley sighed. “Sorry.” He ‘blinked’, and they were on the same level again.

            “Don’t get like that,” Ligur said. “I’ve seen you like that before—when I was watching. I can’t—drag you out with, with cocoa and movie tickets, or whatever it is that angel does to get you to snap out of it.”

            At the memory, Crowley almost brightened up. Then, at the realization that Aziraphale would never be able to cheer him up again, he sank even deeper. Ligur had to seize his arm to keep him from falling right through the ground to the center of the Earth. Crowley allowed himself to be pulled halfway back up.

            “You wanna know,” Ligur said, with some chagrin, “the real reason I wanted to tell you about how we can mess with the Earth and stuff?”

            “You know, Ligur, sometimes the whole ‘being tortured-slash-annoyed’ thing is a nice distraction from my own inner turmoil, but I’m really not in the mood right now—”

            “It’s because I knew you’d mess with them.”

            “M-Mess with who?”

            “The bloody people who run this place,” Ligur said. “I knew if I got you in front of that angel, you’d want to go back. You wouldn’ just do what you’re _supposed_ to. You’d mess around with the whole weird world we live in, cause messin’ around with things is what you do!”

            Crowley rubbed his face and glared up at him. He felt far too tired to be dealing with this. He felt way, way too tired to be dealing with anything, _especially_ with the _truth_.

            “So here’s what I’m gonna do,” Ligur said, regardless. “I’m gonna disgust myself for a minute by trying to compliment you, help you, and _be like you_ all at the same time. And I’m gonna do it by attempting to _tempt_ you to break the rules one last time.”

            Crowley gazed blearily up at him. His curiosity got the better of him. Something new—something weird, anyway. Ligur looked sincere.

            “Get us out of here,” Ligur said. “You can prove you’ve got power over what you do that way.”

            Crowley looked back down and stared at his hands. Funny how they always said, ‘I know it like the back of my hand’—but here he was, finding it hard to focus on them, because they were just from his mind, and he didn’t know what his own hands looked like, not really. Even though he’d had them for much longer than the average human.

            Course, he remembered every line of the angel’s face.

            He stood up. Ligur gave a little ‘whoop.’ Crowley faced him determinedly.

            Then he grinned.

            “So,” Ligur said eagerly, following as Crowley started pacing back and forth. “We’re gonna help Aziraphale travel back in time?”

            “No, don’t be ridiculous. Time travel’s not real.” Crowley ran a hand through his hair so that it stuck up in a way that definitely should have defied gravity. “No, time’s too—wibbly-wobbly. He’s only trying to go back in time because he thinks I’m gone. Once he finds out we’re still here, all we have to do is figure out a way to break through the barrier between planes and get _back_.”

            “Right!” Ligur grinned. Then he looked sheepish. “Yeah. Come to think of it. I like that plan better.”

            “Cause you don’t have to learn physics?”

            Ligur scratched his head. “Well, after thinkin’ for a bit, I realized maybe your angel wouldn’t have gone far back enough in time to rescue _me_.”

            Crowley felt very awkward at that, and so did Ligur, but he had said ‘ _your_ angel’ and that was making Crowley feel— _something_ —and so he was able to distract himself and not comment.

            “First,” Crowley said, “we need to think of a way to get their attention. Something that will let them know it’s us, or at least that they’re being haunted, and it’s not just some unexplained phenomena that could have happened to anyone.”

            “And something we _can_ do. Cause if we could just say, ‘oy, Hastur, I’m still around’, I’d’ve done it already.”

            “Right. Right.” Crowley conjured up an imaginary pen just so he could chew on the end of it while he thought. He held it out to Ligur. “Can they see these things? The ones we make up?”

            “No,” Ligur said. “They can see this though.” He held out his knife.

            “Right! A floating knife, that’s brilliant!”

            “Hastur won’t notice it.”

            Crowley was nonplussed. “A—a floating knife?”

            Ligur shrugged. “He thinks he’s just seein’ things.” He held the knife out in a way that was reminiscent of a Shakespeare play. “Says stuff like, ‘You’re not real!’ and ‘Begone!’ I guess knives are just on his mind a lot anyway.”

            Crowley rubbed his temple. “Your— _acquaintance_ —is a mess. Okay. So we’ll show the knife to Aziraphale.”

            “Like he’s better. He might not notice it if we waved it under his nose.” He leered at Crowley. “He dunt even notice you pinin’ over ‘im.”

            Crowley glared at him. “Well, do you have any better ideas?”

            “Hey, you’re the ideas guy. ‘He who murders is in charge of coming up with brilliant plans.’”

            “Oh, who said that, John the Baptist?”

            Ligur was interrupted at the start of his retort by the sound of a bell ringing in the distance.

            “Someone’s asking for help from the angels?” Crowley asked.

            Ligur shrugged. He glanced behind him, where the sound was coming from. Then he glanced back again in a double-take. He turned to Crowley and grinned.

            “What?” Crowley said, feeling a sense of dread.

            “I know where it’s coming from.”

 

            Crowley followed Ligur over the plane of the dead until they reached a place that was just a little outside London. The bell had been going off and on, sometimes ringing, then cutting out suddenly, then ringing all over again. When Ligur stopped, the ringing had also.

            “I could have swore it was here,” he said.

            Crowley was about to say something when the ringing started again, and a person, on their knees and screaming, appeared directly in front of him. Crowley yelled, and Ligur gave a whoop of delight. As quickly as they had appeared, the person vanished and the ringing stopped.

            “I knew it!”

            “What was that?” Crowley cried.

            “One of Hastur’s!”

            “One of Hastur’s _whats?_ ” Crowley asked, horrified.

            The bell started ringing again. The person had reappeared. This time, they were lying prone on the imagined ground. They didn’t move for a moment.

            “Er. Say—” Crowley said.

            The person leapt to their feet and screamed at him. Crowley yelled back. Ligur stood between them and said, soothingly to the person, “It’s all right, mate! You’re already dead!”

            The person stopped yelling out of pure bafflement. “What?” she said.

            “Hastur killed you, it’s over!”

            “What he means is,” Crowley interjected quickly, “it’s all right now. Er. We’re not going to hurt you.”

            “Who are you?” she said. “One minute I’m being killed by bloody Duke Eyebrows and next I’m talking to—to—” She frowned at him. “Hold on. Aren’t you the Serpent?”

            “Well, yes,” Crowley said, slightly proud at being recognized.

            “Erherm,” Ligur said. “And don’t you know who _I_ am?”

            The newly-dead demon looked at him. “Oh, no.”

            “That’ll do,” Ligur said proudly.

            “But aren’t you dead?” she asked. “I thought you two had—” And then she looked down at herself. She didn’t have a scratch on her. “Oh, no...”

            “She’s a demon, right?” Crowley whispered to Ligur while she had her moment of discovery.

            “Yep. I figured this was what was happenin’ when I heard the bell going off ‘n on again over near where Hastur’s been hangin’ out. He has this technique, see. He tortures people right unto the point of death then brings ‘em back.”

            “That’s horrific,” Crowley said. “He didn’t bring her back, though. I think she’s really dead.”

            “Maybe he got carried away,” Ligur said thoughtfully. He scratched his chin, then looked up at Crowley with a gleam in his eye. “I wonder what he’s torturin’ other demons for.”

            “Huh.”

            “What’d he say when he killed _you_ , anyway?”

            Crowley gave Ligur a disapproving look. “He said, ‘This is for making me keep living on in this despicable world.’ And went on and on about how it could have ended and it _should_ have been over and he could be done with it—what’s _wrong_ with him, by the way?”

            “I don’t think he’s a very happy person,” Ligur said matter-of-factly. Then, trying to look casual but instead looking rather like he had just shoved four cookies in his mouth and was trying to hide them, he said, “He didn’t mention me, then?”

            “No,” Crowley said, side-eying him.

            Ligur drooped.

            “Why should he have mentioned you, Ligur?” Crowley said.*

*Even nice demons have to seize a chance to get revenge once in a while.

            Ligur made an ‘I don’t know’ sound, crossing his arms and sulking.

            “I mean it?” Crowley said. “Do you think he should have been _thinking_ about you? You can stop beating about the bush, you know. After all, we’re both dead—”

            “Oh my Satan, I’m _dead!_ ”

            They both turned reluctantly back to the other demon.

            “He actually killed me,” she exclaimed. “But I’m still here! And I’ve found Duke Ligur and the Serpent of Eden! But how am I still around? What happens next? Where are we? And what is that ringing sound?”

            “Oh, the ringing,” Crowley said. Then he and Ligur turned to each other suddenly with wide eyes.

            “Uh-oh—”

            Z appeared before either of them could think to run.

            “Greetings, new angel,” they said. “And welcome to the afterlife.” Then they noticed the other two and their demeanor became much less welcoming. “What are you two doing here?”

            “Er,” Ligur said.

            “We just happened to be in the area—” Crowley supplied.

            “—and we heard the ringing—”

            “—and we thought we’d come help the new arrival.”

            “You two are up to something,” Z said, narrowing their eyes. “Aren’t you? I knew I should have pushed harder for you to go to sleep—but it would be wrong to force you. You should know, though, that if you cause us _any_ trouble, there _will_ be consequences.” They turned to the new demon. “And how did _you_ get here?”

            “Um,” she said. “Duke Hastur was torturing me because I accidentally let a human see my wings, so he had to go deal with them, and he hates dealing with humans, and then—well—he killed me.”

            “Hastur?” Z squinted at Crowley. “Didn’t he kill you too?”

            “Er.”

            “And I distinctly remember hearing his name from you, Ligur. Three demons dead close together for the first time in centuries. This all has to be connected. You two have something to do with it, don’t you? You haven’t been communicating with Hastur and telling him to kill other angels—or demons, whatever—have you?”

            “Er. How would we be doing that?” Crowley said, in a stroke of genius.

            Z backed off, but they were still glaring at him. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you two. For now, shoo. I need to address this new arrival and tell her the situation. Without your interference, Ligur.”

            Ligur grinned toothily* and backed away. Crowley followed.

*Or fangily, or yellowed-spotted-teeth-that-weren’t-exactly-sharp-but-weren’t-quite-the-right-shape-nonetheless-in-a-disturbing-kind-of-way-ily.

            “They’ll be watching Hastur, too.”

            “Okay, so we start with your angel,” Ligur said. “But if he starts talking about only saving one of us, the deal’s off.”

            “We still don’t know how we’re going to talk to him,” Crowley mused. “But first we have to get his attention.”

            “Great. And you’ve always been so good at that.”

            Crowley glared at him. “You know, the faster you help, the sooner we get out of here. And the sooner you can talk to _your_ demon again.”

            “My w—Oy. Hey. Don’t sound too smug, serpent. I know! Why don’t you take off your glasses and stare at him smolderingly with your weird yellow eyes? That always got his attention before. So don’t you go talking to _me_ about _my_ anything, you—you— _tease_.”

            “That—” Crowley stammered, furious that Ligur knew that the angel had noticed when he did that when he himself hadn’t, “That—that—that might actually work.”

            “Er—what?”

            “Not the eyes thing. My glasses. If I can find a pair, bring them to the angel’s, and leave them for him to see, like the knife you carry, he’ll be bound to know something’s up.”

            “And he won’t just think he’s seeing things?”

            “No, because _my_ angel’s not crazy. Besides, specters of guilt don’t usually manifest themselves as shaded spectacles.”

            “Fine,” Ligur said. “Then I suppose we’ll try it with _yours_ first.”

            And this time he sounded almost jealous.

 

            They reached the bookshop several hours later, because Crowley had found it difficult to get the hang of carrying real things. Luckily, just carrying a pair of shades through London didn’t seem to be ‘messing around with the living world’ enough to attract Z’s attention. It had just been difficult enough to take all day.

            Finally, they made it through the door—as long as it was something small and you were carrying it, Ligur said, you could take it through walls with you—and Crowley stopped for a moment to regain his strength before venturing to the back room in search of the angel.

            The glasses were cracked and broken. Crowley had dropped them repeatedly on their way there.

            “Good,” Ligur said when Crowley mentioned it. “That’ll give them more of a ghosty, afterlife-haunting appearance.”

            “He’s gonna think I’m angry,” Crowley said. “I don’t want him to think I’m _angry_ -haunting him.”

            “It’d be a good thing. The fear of an angry threat motivates people.”

            “You are so psychologically damaged,” Crowley grunted as he lifted the glasses off the ground once more. He heaved them through the bookshop and into the back room, dragging them through the wall with one final groan—which he quickly stifled, realizing that it sounded way too much like something from the Haunted Mansion.

            Aziraphale looked up instantly.

            “Maybe he heard your voice,” Ligur said as he glided into the room beside him.

            Crowley dropped the glasses. The sight of the angel was too much. The shades falling had been enough, though. Aziraphale noticed them as they clattered to the floor.

            He walked over and knelt down next to them without hesitation. He reached out his hand and touched the side of the glasses, just barely with the tips of his fingers. He was shaking, brow furrowed.

            “It’s working,” Ligur hissed, to the chagrin of Crowley, who was having a moment with his angel. He shushed him. Ligur rolled his eyes and stepped back to lurk near the wall.

            “What—” Aziraphale said in barely more than a whisper.

            “It’s me.” Crowley could hardly speak, himself. “Angel, I’m here. It’s _me_.”

            Aziraphale was frowning. He bit his lip and looked up, as though looking for a place the glasses could have fallen from. While he was looking away, he absent-mindedly caressed the cracks going along the glasses with his thumb.

            “I’m right _here_ ,” Crowley hissed. “ _Notice_ me. Angel, just—just notice me.”

            Aziraphale grabbed the glasses and stood up. He walked over to his desk, set them down on it, and sat down. He put his head in his hands.

            “He thinks it’s just a coincidence,” Ligur said. “Like you left ‘em here and he forgot about them ‘til just now. He’s trying to rationalize it. I can just see the cogs of his bloody brain working to find a way to _reason_ out of this.”

            “You call it reason,” Crowley said. “I call it denial.” Then he scowled and marched over behind the desk. There was a shelf there with wine bottles on it—many, from decades and even centuries ago.

            Crowley knocked one to the ground.

            Ligur and the angel both gasped as it shattered. Aziraphale turned and balked at the sight of the dark purple running across the rug. As the floor darkened, his face went pale.

            This time he didn’t move. He just stared at it.

            “That’s right, angel,” Crowley said, his voice much louder now. “Forget it! Now I _am_ angry-haunting!” And he smashed another bottle to the floor.

            “Crowley—” Aziraphale said, strangled.

            “Ha!” Crowley beamed. “That’s right! I always did have to use alcohol to get through to you!” He reached for the next bottle. Then he winced, his hand frozen in mid-air.

            “No—” Aziraphale was saying. “It—it can’t be—I’m losing it—”

            Crowley grimaced at the bottle, chewing his lip. It was from 1765—they had bought it together, during one of their meetings for the Arrangement, as they still called it back then. The angel had been saving it.

            “I’m just losing it,” Aziraphale said, closing his eyes tight.

            Crowley knocked the bottle to the ground.

            Aziraphale opened his eyes. For a moment, the sound of the breaking glass faded and the wine spread across the floor in silence.

            Then the angel strode over and walked directly through Crowley.

            The angel shivered. Crowley closed his eyes, something he hadn’t managed to do in the afterlife so far, and for a moment he really was unaware of the rest of the world, not seeing or hearing anything but just feeling the strange sensation of having been in the same exact place as him.

            Aziraphale took a deep breath and a step back. He crouched and began to pick up the pieces of the bottle. Crowley opened his eyes and shakily took a few steps away.

            “Is it working?” Ligur asked. Crowley just shook his head.

            Aziraphale had found part of the bottle’s label. He stared at it, and then his eyes focused on something very far away.

            “If we could find some way to say something more specific,” Crowley said. “I’m trying to think of all the horror movies I’ve seen, but I mostly avoid them—”

            “Chicken.”

            “—because they’re so _ridiculous_. But still. There has to be something. Some way that ghosts do more than just startle people.”

            “We probably shouldn’t do more now anyway,” Ligur said. “Remember what ghost lady told us. Too much, and we’ll draw Z’s attention.”

            “We’ve got Aziraphale’s attention, anyway. But we need more. We need to send him a message. To communi—” Crowley stopped. His eyes lit up.

            He grabbed Ligur by the shoulders.

            “What is this?” Ligur said.

            “Don’t look so bothered,” Crowley practically sang. “Listen. I’ve _got_ it.”

 

            All it had taken was one sparkly maroon shawl. Crowley had found it at the shop next door. Aziraphale had taken one look at it, and his eyes had widened.

            “Yes,” he said. “Her. Yes, she’s just what I need!”

            Then he had hurried out the door.

 

            Madame Tracy’s parlor was in almost clear focus, not quite as crystal as the bookshop had been for Crowley, but close. The colors were visible but faded, as though seen through aged photographs. She probably would have appreciated the effect if she had been able to see it. Crowley didn’t mind it, himself. It helped dim down some of the louder colors.

            “Funny,” Ligur said. “I’ve never been here, but I can see it all really well.”

            “It’s this place,” Crowley said, looking around at the shawls and the smoke of the incense which he could _almost_ _smell_. “The—energies, or something. I don’t know if Madame Tracy is actually that talented, or if she just happened to find the perfect place for her—er, work—but it’s like the veil is thinner here.”

            “There are certainly plenty of thin _somethings_ ,” Ligur said, frowning as he walked through yet another drapey bit of sparkling fabric. It fluttered around him like cobwebs and he flapped his hands in the air and hurried out from underneath.

            Aziraphale arrived, five minutes before his appointment, and he in his drab clothes, his tan coat and dusty green sweater and corduroy pants—they all stood out like a candle in a dark room, even in the midst of all of Tracy’s bangles and curtains. Crowley couldn’t help but stare. Embarrassed, he tore his eyes away and looked at Ligur to see if he had noticed—but the demon had given the angel a quick glance and then looked away, noticing nothing. _No, well he wouldn’t. That would have been awkward_ , Crowley thought with a grimace.

            Madame Tracy accepted his earliness graciously. The tea, she said, had just finished. The benefit, she said, of being a fortune-teller, was that you were always prepared for your clients, no matter when they arrived.

            They sat themselves around a small round table. Crowley and Ligur lurked nearby, unseen and unfelt, although Aziraphale did seem jumpier than usual, looking over his shoulder every once and a while.

            Madame Tracy set out the Ouija board.

            “Have you thought about what you’re going to say?” Ligur whispered.

            Madame Tracy rolled her eyes back into her head, raised her hands over the board, and started humming. Crowley felt himself growing nervous, because he _hadn’t_. He had been letting himself _feel_ things, for once, and had completely forgotten to create the words to say them, as though that would be enough. Madame Tracy took Aziraphale’s hand in her own and put both of them on the planchette.

            They waited.

            The planchette started to move.

            Madame Tracy grimaced. The piece was moving very slowly, giving small jerks and starts. Tracy’s brow started to glisten with sweat. She bit her lip.

            After a moment, she cleared her throat. “Mr. Aziraphale,” she said tartly. “May I remind you that you are not supposed to move the planchette _yourself_ , love.”

            “I’m not moving it,” Aziraphale cried indignantly.

            “Now, dearie. I’ve been doing this a long time and I can tell the difference between the other person moving it and—and spirits—”

            The planchette jumped a little and both Aziraphale and Tracy squashed it down with their hands.

            “ _You_ wouldn’t happen to be moving it,” Aziraphale said between clenched teeth, “would you, dear woman?”

            They made very stubborn eye contact across the table. Then, they lifted their hands.

            The planchette continued to move.

            “Oh my heavens,” Madame Tracy breathed.

            Meanwhile, Crowley was very glad that he no longer had muscles, because he probably would have strained something.

            “You’d think—” he grunted, pushing the planchette with both hands, “—they’d make—these things—a little _easier_ —to move for dead people.”

            “Right,” Ligur said, leaning casually against a draped wall. “Because the toy makers really ought to know about this afterlife for demons that even demons themselves dint know about.”

            Crowley glared at him. Then he focused on the planchette again. “And they were _both_ trying to move it,” he grumbled, “which was _not_ helping. All right. One more letter—”

            “Crowley,” Aziraphale gasped.

            The planchette stopped on the letter ‘y’, looking terribly relieved.

            Madame Tracy was positively aflutter. She clapped her bangled hands together and gave a little chortle. “Oohoohoo, that’s him, isn’t it? That’s the one you’re looking for! He’s here! He’s _speaking_ with us!”

            “So it would seem,” Aziraphale said, and he held a hand out to the planchette and almost touched it. Then, not wanting to interrupt, he pulled it away and crossed his hands patiently in his lap. “Go ahead, Crowley,” he said, his voice small and polite and almost shaking. “I’m listening.”

            Crowley found it much easier to move the second time. The planchette hardly paused on each letter long enough for Madame Tracy to scribble it down in her notebook with her pink-feathered pen. Aziraphale simply watched them, his eyes burning.

            The planchette stopped. Tracy scanned her eyes over the letters she had written, over and over. Aziraphale leaned forward, ever so slightly, towards her.

            She looked at him and held up her notes.

            T H E R E I S A N A F T E R L I F E

            Aziraphale took a deep breath.

            Madame Tracy beamed. “ _There is an afterlife!_ ” she trilled. “Isn’t that _marvelous?_ I mean, of course, I always knew—it being my calling, and all, to commune with the dead—but what a lovely message for him to send you, love!”

            Aziraphale hardly moved. He ran his eyes over the letters one more time. He said, in a low voice, “’Isn’t it marvelous?’ My dear woman, you have no idea.”

            Then he stood up and started pacing.

            “Great,” Ligur said. “Now tell him to get us out of here.”

            “I’m working on it,” Crowley said. He put his hand on the planchette—but it didn’t move, not because it was too heavy, or he was too ethereal, but because he couldn’t think of a thing to say.

            “Ask him what it’s like,” Tracy bubbled. “Ask him if he’s happy there. That’s what my clients always want to hear about their loved ones, ‘Is he happy?’”

            “‘Is he happy’,” Aziraphale said scornfully. He stopped his pacing and returned to the side of the table, where he stood, arms crossed. He was almost glaring at the board. Then his expression changed—his brow knitted with worry and he leaned down to stare at the board closely. “Are you happy?” he said, this time almost sounding like he meant it, and almost sounding like he hated to ask. Then he said, all in a flurry, “But what is it _like_ there? How did you get to an afterlife? It’s not Heaven, is it? It’s not—it’s not where you came from before? No, you would have just told me that.”

            Madame Tracy looked at him worriedly. “A bit of an odd couple, aren’t you?” she said. “Who did you say he was to you?”

            “I’ve got to tell him to get us out of here,” Crowley said. “I don’t want him thinking he needs to let me _rest in peace_.”       

            “Um—Crowley,” Ligur said.

            “Hah. Who am I kidding. That angel wouldn’t let me rest a day.”

            “Speak to me, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, and his voice was louder now—less muffled, like the veil between them was getting even thinner. Crowley grabbed the planchette and picked it up, and it hardly weighed anything at all.

            “ _Crowley_ ,” Ligur said.

            “Come get me,” Crowley said. “How do I tell you to come get me back?”

            “Where are you?” Aziraphale cried. “Are you safe? Are you alone?”

            That was a question Crowley could answer, so he moved the planchette to the letter ‘L’, but before he could move it further, somebody grabbed his wrist.

            It was Z.

            The room went out of focus. The color drained in an instant, and Crowley felt cold, though that might have just been the sudden fear in his soul. He stared at their face and they stared back at him, looking angry, but not thunderously so.

            Because how much harm could they have done anyway? What could they even do?

            Still, they looked rather peeved.

            “Ouija boards,” they said, “are strictly not allowed.”

            “Eheh,” Crowley said, brilliantly.

            “I was tryin’ to tell ya,” Ligur mumbled. Z shot him a glance and he shrank further into the drapes.

            “That is why,” Z continued, “we have alarmed them so that we know exactly when they are being used. You cannot interfere with the land of the living.”

            “Why not?” Crowley snapped. “What harm does it do?”

            “What harm does it _do?_ ” Z’s eyebrows shot up on their forehead. “To let the entire world know that their lives are only a teensy tiny part of a gigantic process that _is not ended_ by death? To let them know that their entire concept of existence is flawed? What harm does it do?”

            Crowley blinked. “Er—well—it’s only one angel.”

            Z let go of his wrist and crossed their arms. “One angel. An angel who seems to know you. And you are trying to tell me this is the kind of good angel who will do what he’s told? An angel who won’t _talk?_ ”

            To Z’s side, where they weren’t looking, Ligur was making a face. Crowley tried to ignore him and distract Z, and said, “Er, well. Not all of that. But—” He shot a glance behind him at Aziraphale, who was still shining brighter than the rest of the room, who was bent over the board in deep conversation with Madame Tracy. He looked back at Z. “He’s selfish. I’ll give you that one. Which means he’ll do what gets him what he wants. Which means he won’t tell anyone if he knows that keeping it secret will keep me safe.”

            Ligur grunted. Z lowered one eyebrow, keeping the other raised, and directed it towards him. Ligur raised his hands. “Oh no, I’m not denying it,” he said. “I’m just snorting cause it’s embarrassing for _him_.”

            Z lowered their second eyebrow and used it to glower back at Crowley. “Do not try to contact the living,” they said. “There is nothing for you to say to them. Their time will come soon enough. Trust me. I am very old and time passes quickly.”

            “Not quickly enough,” Crowley said out of the corner of his mouth.

            “Not in this conversation, anyway,” Ligur grumbled in commiseration.

            “I will be keeping an eye on this one angel,” Z said. “Angels are even easier to track than humans. I was almost one once. So you have been warned.”

            They turned to the angel and human who were still talking over the Ouija board.

            “‘L’,” Aziraphale was saying. “That’s all he said. That’s all he will say. He’s stopped. What does it mean?”

            “What does ‘L’ mean, indeed,” Madame Tracy said with a sly look at him out of the corner of her eye. “I’m sure I don’t know, love.”

            Z turned back to Ligur and Crowley. “It seems like not much harm was done this time. But I don’t want to see you anywhere near this angel or this human again. Do you understand?”

            Ligur sulked and started to slump away from the scene. Crowley followed, but then he turned back and scowled at Z one last time.

            “You know,” he said, “you haven’t made such a free and perfect afterlife as you think you have.”

            “I’m _not_ an angel,” Z said dispassionately. “Or a demon. I'm meant to work among humans. I know that there are contradictions in things.” They gestured for them to go. “And I never said I was trying to make _anything_ ‘perfect’.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been reading 'The Faerie Queene' and loving the language. That doesn't mean this is accurate to the seventeenth century in the least....


	6. 'L' Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ligur and Crowley confront some scary things, like a tortured demon, a spooky forest, more murders, and feelings.

            So their next plan was Hastur.

            This time they weren’t walking in empty-handed. Crowley had been thinking of a Plan. It seemed there were places in the world where dead people could almost reach through. Some of them _meant_ something to the dead person, like the ghost and her ruins, or Crowley and his bookstore. Then there were places where the veil was already thin. Crowley had been enough of a paranormal enthusiast* to know of a few.

*This was ironic, considering he was a supernatural being himself, but there you have it.

            “Ley lines and stuff,” he said. “Portals to other dimensions. Whatever people call them, people have found them, because people are—well, people. Brilliant, curious people.”

            “Blah, blah,” Ligur said. “So we find a place where the ‘veil’, as you’ve so poetically put it, is thin? And then we rip through it.”

            “And then we rip through it. And that’s what we’ll tell Hastur. Er. In case he’s any help at all. Why are we doing this again? I mean, Aziraphale has read a lot, he’d know about this sort of thing, but—”

            “But Hastur’s much better at ripping things.”

            “What does that even _mean?_ That doesn’t mean _anything_ , does it, it just sounds vaguely threatening!”

            “The threat’s half the pain, Crowley,” Ligur said cheerfully.

            “You and your mottos.”

            Luckily, Z hadn’t had as much contact with Hastur as with Aziraphale, in spite of his growing infamy in the demon afterlife, so they weren’t keeping tabs on him quite yet. Plus, despite what he claimed about detesting the place, Hastur had more than a few ‘lairs’ around Earth, as opposed to the rather more sedentary angel’s one bookstore. It made the duke harder to track if you didn’t know him. But one of the demons _did_ know him. It took them hardly any time at all to find Hastur in one of his gloomiest lairs.

            He had set this one on fire.

            It was strange, Crowley thought, not being able to feel the heat as he and Ligur walked through the burning building in search of the other demon. He kept wincing and trying not to breathe, even though the bright light would only hurt his eyes if he imagined it did. _And,_ _Hell, I don’t even need to breathe at all._

            They found Hastur in the very middle of the large, warehouse-like building, standing in the midst of his flames, letting them dance around him while he raised his hands palms-up with fingers bent like claws and let his small kingdom burn.

            “Erm—” Crowley said out of the corner of his mouth to Ligur. “You sure he’s all right?”

            “All right? How dare you ask me if he’s _all right!_ I didn’t ask _you_ if your angel was ‘all right’ after you’d been dead for days!”

            “Sorry,” Crowley said, grimacing as a flame leapt up in front of him, “but I’m finding it hard to keep track of what does and doesn’t insult you.”

            Hastur was beginning a low laugh that seemed as though it was going to build up into a maniacal, hysterical, or possibly even diabolical one any moment now.

            “This is very embarrassing,” Crowley said. “Are you sure we shouldn’t leave?”

            “What, and wait for him to _not_ be surrounded by flames?” Ligur said. He nudged Crowley. “Come on!”

            They walked to the center of the room where Hastur was standing. His laugh had died in his throat. There was an odd look in his eye. Crowley would almost have called it ‘detached’.

            Ligur was practically bouncing.

            “D’you know what you’re going to do?” Crowley asked.

            Ligur nodded. He grinned. “I can almost feel it burning.”

            Crowley stepped aside and gestured for the demon to make his move. Ligur stepped closer to the flames. He took in a deep breath. Then he blew.

            He created a giant wind. The gust blew through the building, flattening the flames one by one. Soon, they were all out, except for a few tiny sparks and embers that burned on the floor. They spelled out the word _Hastur_.

            “Damn. How’d you do that?”

            “It’s like I’m really here,” Ligur said, his eyes glowing. He sneered at Crowley. “I guess I’m just better at haunting than you are.”

            “Congratulations.” Crowley nudged him back. “Course, _I_ found it easier to affect the world when I was feeling _emotionally attached_. Don’t know about _you_.”

            Ligur disdained to reply.

            Hastur was looking around in confusion. He noticed the flames spelling out his name. He did a double take. He said, “Did I do that?”

            “Great,” Crowley murmured. “Your boyfriend’s an idiot.”

            Ligur attempted to seize Crowley by the collar, but since Crowley hadn’t been expecting it and therefore hadn’t imagined it, his hand went right through him. “What’d you say?” Ligur snarled.

            “Oh, I wasn’t even trying to mess with you there. It just slipped out.” Crowley pointed at Hastur. “ _Talk_ to him.”

            Ligur cast him a dirty look and stalked over to Hastur, still grumbling. He looked his fellow Duke in the eye. Hastur was studying the embers in complete bafflement.

            Ligur flicked him on the forehead. “Oy.”

            Hastur did nothing.

            “Oy, idiot,” Ligur said. He flicked him again.

            “As endearing as this is—” Crowley began.

            “Shush. I’ll get to him!”

            Hastur bent down to look more closely at his burning name, and as he did, he leant right through Ligur. Ligur backed away in disgust. He fell backwards onto the embers, scattering them and casting them out.

            Hastur’s eyes widened. “Cast out the flames,” he murmured. He stood up slowly. “Cursed,” he said, in a deep, foreboding tone.

            Ligur, cursing, stood up. “Pay attention,” he snapped. He waved his hands in front of the duke’s face.

            Hastur was still oblivious. He was lighting another flame. He held it in his hand, then gently let it drop to the floor, where it spread quickly around them in a circle.

            “He’s put petrol all over this place,” Crowley said in dismay.

            Ligur was staring at Hastur. There was a wrinkle on his brow right between his eyes.

            He glared.

            “Right,” Ligur said. “Here we go.”

            He closed his eyes and focused.

            A space appeared, parting the ring of flame, clearing a space so that one wall was visible through it.

            On the wall, Ligur’s shadow appeared—his hunched, creeping, _lurking_ shadow.

            Hastur saw it. He let the flames fall to the ground, all except the one he was holding in his hand. It cast an eerie light on his angular face, and just enough light to keep the shadow visible. “Ligur—” he said in a low voice.

            Ligur and Crowley waited.

            Then, Hastur went on, his voice growing in volume as he said, “Oh, Lucifer, release me from this! Free me from this relentless haunting! What remorse could I show that would make up for my guilt?”

            Ligur clicked his tongue and waved his arms at him, but in doing so his shadow disappeared. Hastur had buried his face in his hands and didn’t notice. “No,” Ligur complained, “I’m not here cause I’m getting _revenge_ , you idiot!”

            “Maybe,” Crowley said, “if you guys _talked_ to each other and were more emotionally vulnerable, you wouldn’t have such communication issues.”

            “I do not _love_ him!”

            Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Wow.” He put a finger in his collar and pulled at it. “You went right for the ‘L’ word, huh? Even _I_ wasn’t going to push you that far.”

            “Shutitshutit, I do not love—”

            “Ligur.”

            Hastur had spoken. They both froze and looked at him.

            He looked stricken.

            “Ligur. I'm so sorry. It should’ve been me.”

            “Oh, this is embarrassing,” Ligur said.

            “I _wish_ it had been me.”

            “Stop being so bleak, you bloody—bloody Heaven, Crowley is right, we do have issues!”

            “Told you so,” Crowley said.

            Ligur walked up to Hastur and sighed, his lanky arms drooping uselessly to his sides. “I dunno,” he said. “What can I say? You’re dismal. I dunno how to haunt someone who’s already haunted by guilt. What’re you feeling guilty for, anyway, huh? Demons ain’t supposed to do that. You’re gonna end up just like Sorry Serpent here if you’re not careful.”

            He flicked him again.

            Hastur blinked and said, “ _Ow!_ ”

            Ligur stared. Then he grinned. Then he slapped him lightly across the face.

            “Ow!” Hastur ran his hand over his gaunt face in confusion. Then he reached out blindly in front of him, making grabbing motions. Ligur leapt back deftly and cackled.

            Hastur frowned. “On the other hand,” he said, his tone much changed from before, now far less bleak and much more like his old threatening demon self, “if that really _is_ you, Ligur, and you really are haunting me, I _will_ exorcise you, you bloody bastard!”

            “ _Or you could try to bring me back, you great oaf!_ ”

            “Hold on,” Crowley said, amused, in spite of himself, at the proceedings. He had been a demon, after all, for thousands of years. Some of it does stick. “I think I’ve got this.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Well, I’ve been thinking. There are two types of ghosts that haunt people. Ones who are— _acquaintances_ —with the person being haunted.”

            Ligur nodded appreciatively.

            Crowley grinned. “And ones who want _revenge_.”

            And he thought about dying.

            He thought about the way Hastur had grinned over him as he was bleeding on the floor.

            He thought about the fact that this, all of this, had happened in the first place because the duke had wanted to destroy the entire world.

            He thought about Aziraphale sitting alone in his bookshop.

            He made a tiny flame on the tip of his index finger. He shuffled his feet on the floor, spreading the gasoline. Then he dropped the flame.

            It expanded on the floor into the shape of a serpent.

            Hastur saw it and gasped. It was theatrical, it was moving, and that was exactly why it worked. It gave Crowley just the amount of bravado to take in a deep breath and—

            “ _You_ ,” Hastur hissed, terrified.

            —and Crowley bellowed, “BRING US BACK!”

            The scream reverberated throughout the building. It echoed off the walls and down the many halls that led off from the main gargantuan chamber, and the vibrations of the words sent shivers down Hastur’s spine. The walls quaked. The duke looked mortified.

            Crowley crossed his arms, satisfied. Ligur rubbed a finger in his ear and said, “Yep. That oughta do the trick.”

 

            So now they had Hastur looking out for them. Unfortunately, Hastur had no idea how to bring them back, and they couldn’t very well explain their idea of breaking through the veil of death entirely through flaming letters or shadows on the wall. Ligur insisted that they stop haunting him for a while in case doing anything more would draw Z’s attention. He didn’t want both of their links to the living world to be off-limits. Crowley reluctantly conceded to the logic in this.

            Hastur, admittedly, had been trying. So had Aziraphale. The angel had been researching everything he could on near-death experiences, but all of them suggested that humans were seeing either Heaven or, on the awkward rare occasion, Hell, when they were pulled away from the ‘bright light at the end of the tunnel’. Next he’d researched ghosts and hauntings. He’d found some of the most haunted places on Earth, and had even traveled to a few. That was all they knew for now, because Z was keeping an eye on him. At first Ligur had been watching over the angel in the hopes that since he had less of a connection with him, it wouldn’t draw Z’s attention if he followed him around. Z apparently took no notice of the difference and had spotted him anyway, and now neither of them could even approach England without one of the twelve other angels hovering nearby, sheepishly informing them that Z had sent them to make sure they didn’t ‘get up to anything.’

            Meanwhile, Hastur had been taking a different approach to the whole thing.

            “Because _dying_ is where we’re closest to _death_ ,” Ligur explained, sounding fed up with Crowley’s response. The serpent was still mortified.

            “Ligur, he’s killed _three people_.”

            “And all of them have passed through here, eh? Only for a second. Then they disappeared, sure, to go to Hell or wherever, but—”

            “It’s not working, and it’s awful,” Crowley said. “You need to tell him to stop.”

            “What’m I supposed to do, write ‘Stop murderin’ people’ on the wall in blood? He’ll never believe it was me.”

            Hastur had been studying the deaths closely, recording the things the people said or did, but they hadn’t said or done anything remotely helpful. Crowley felt sick.

            “Look—if it makes you feel any better—they were people he was gonna kill anyway. Humans he’d struck up a deal with and who it was time to pay their due. He don’t go around just killin’ random humans.”

            “Really?”

            Ligur made a face. “And don’t you go spreadin’ that about.”

            The two of them were walking through Germany, an excellent place for hauntings. Every here and there the world would look brighter, clearer, more visible to the dead, albeit those places were a dark and gloomy sort of clear, as haunted places tended to be. Right now they were in the middle of a forest. The trees were old and huge, bigger than you would have thought trees should be. They seemed like something out of a child’s nightmare, or from a fairy tale. In spite of their grandeur, the space between them felt confined. Crowley almost felt trapped, even though he knew he could have walked through any of the trees’ knotted trunks. The branches reached out to him with sharp, bent fingers. Crowley held up his hand and touched one—he could feel it, even more than he had felt the planchette, or his own sunglasses.

            “Funny,” Crowley said, his voice low, as though he had to hide from something. “How the space between life and death is thinner here. I wonder if it’s because this place is so—old. Germany. So much history.”

            “What?”

            Ligur’s crass and normal-volumed voice made Crowley wince.

            “S’not that old,” Ligur said. “The Earth’s all the same age.”

            “I mean, its history. People living here. They’re—it’s—it’s just _old_.”

            “In the Holy Roman Empire?”

            “Oh, come off it, Hastur, it hasn’t been that long since you’ve been on Earth. You knew what a hotel desk bell was.”

            “Hotels are very sinful places,” Ligur said significantly. “Spent a lot of time in those. Besides. The middle of Europe’s not that old, s’far as people go. People were all over the Earth in other places for much longer.”

            “Whatever.” Crowley rolled his eyes. “The point is, people _think_ of it as an old place, so I guess that’s why it’s so—thin here? Because they believe it should be haunted here, in this old dark forest? The kind of place where fairy tales were set? Maybe it does have something to do with belief. Maybe that’s why Madame Tracy’s room was so close to us in the afterlife, too.”

            “I’ve been thinkin’,” Ligur said slowly. “If there are people goin’ around haunting and stuff—and Z said not too—then why dunt they just get ‘em to stop? Why don’t they put them all to sleep, like?”

            “You heard what they said. They’re not supposed to do that without our consent.”

            “Well, why not set those featherbrains to watch them like they threatened to do with us? Come to think of it, why _haven’t_ they set their angel watchdogs on us? It’s pretty obvious we’re up to no good. I give off major up-to-no-good vibes. It’s my ambience.”

            “They say they’re busy setting up the _next place_ ,” Crowley said, pushing past some gnarly branches.

            “Huh. Too ‘busy’.” Ligur scowled as he walked right through a tangled bunch of brambles. “They’re probably those people who say they’re always ‘too busy’ for things but really they just do their boring bloody ‘work’ and never make time for nothin’ else. Even if it’s important. Like watchin’ us.” He spat. “I hate those people.”

            “I know what you mean.”

            “Puh. You’re in _love_ with one of those people.”

            Crowley stumbled, and the branch he had been holding back slipped and slapped him in the face, leaving a small scratch across his cheek. He winced and held a hand up to it, checking for blood until he realized that the wound was fake. He bit his lip, and the scratch faded. He turned back to Ligur and glared at him. “Don’t do that.”

            “Do what?” The demon was standing with several branches sticking out of his chest. “Are you still, as you say, _beating about the bush?_ ”

            “You’re just trying—just trying to—”

            “And I thought you liked the truth.” Ligur sneered. “A pitiful quality for a demon. Thought you was always trying to break down artifice and whatnot and discover the reality behind things. The answers. Well, there’s your answers, mate.”

            “I don’t need you to—”

            “I mean _look_ at you, Crowley!” Ligur gestured at him dramatically. “You’re pushin’ aside branches you don’t even need to move. You’re _literally_ beating about the bush. And why?”

            Crowley grimaced and let go of the tree branches. They snapped back into place, right through his shoulder and chest.

            Ligur walked over to him, scratching his chin. “I wonder,” he said, “if it’s some sort of make believe thing. You’ve always been up for that. You pretend you want to be honest, but really you’re just pretending as much as anybody. You want to be human. You want to _feel_ things. Oh, no, wait, _not like that!_ No, you don’t accept the truth. You just try to make believe the world’s the way you want it. You moved those branches cause you want to pretend you’re still alive. You’re dead, Crowley, and this world is ignoring you as best it can.”

            “Making things up is what people do and they _succeed at it_ ,” Crowley hissed. “Look at this place! We wouldn’t be able to touch the world here, even from the afterlife, if people didn’t believe it! Planes, helicopters, cars, space shuttles, all of those were make believe until humans believed in it and then _made it!_ So pardon me if I admire them just a _little_.”

            “Well.” Ligur chewed on his tongue for a moment, then frowned at him. “You’ve admitted you admire humans. That’s about as low as a demon can get. So I guess you bein’ in love with an angel’s not really that much of a fall.”

            They stood for a while, staring at each other. Crowley shook his head. He held out his arms. “What do you want from me?” he said. Then he gave a short laugh. “Y’know, Ligur, you’re messing up if you think this is getting revenge on me for what I did to you. Cause you want to know the truth? The _real_ truth? The one you say I don’t care about at all? You _are_ right. But forcing me to believe the truth is not going to hurt me. In fact, you might actually be doing me a favor.”

            Crowley turned and started walking again. Ligur called after him, “Well, lucky you, cause you never do yourself any.”

            “And let me return the favor, Ligur. If you think I feel that way about him because I miss him, because I think about him all the time, because he’s the one thing I want, I _need_ to get back to—then what does that tell you about yourself? Cause that’s you and Hastur to a T.”

            Crowley was a curious demon. He had never been able to help it. When he didn’t hear Ligur coming after him, and when he didn’t hear him screaming at him, or throwing something at his head, he couldn’t help but turn around and look.

            The demon was where he had left him, standing in the woods, branches sprouting from his chest, glowering at him.

            “Screw you.”

            “Oh, _that’s_ convincing,” Crowley replied.

            “I don’t love him.”

            “Again, Ligur, you are the _only_ one who has ever been saying that word, and most demons, trust me, would shy away from it. Even _I_ have been. So why are you so keen to spit it out all the time?”

            “I don’t.” Ligur sulked. And then he said, in a voice that was equal parts irritated and miserable, “It’s just ‘cause I’m stuck in this dump with no one better to talk to, and thinkin’ ‘bout him makes me feel like I’m still connected to the place I’m tryin’ to get back to, and reminds me who I was when I was there. That could’ve happened with anybody up there if things had worked out different.”

            Crowley sighed. He said, “Maybe that’s all it is. Maybe that’s all it ever is. But there’s one thing you can’t deny.” He gestured for Ligur to follow him, and the demon reluctantly staggered away from the trees. Crowley said, “You like thinking about him better than sitting here alone.”

            Ligur wrinkled his nose, but he did follow him, and the two of them kept following their self-made path through the forest. Ligur grumbled a few times along the way. Crowley didn’t bother to ask him to repeat himself. Eventually Ligur said, “I don’t, though.” He sniffed. “Do that thing that I said. That you said I say too much.”

            “I didn’t say you say it too much.”

            “Well, I don’t, anyway.” Ligur sounded mopey.

            “Whatever.”

            “I tell ya.”

            “I really don’t care.”

            Ligur was smirking, which, with Ligur, was a nearly audible thing. Crowley turned to him in confusion.

            Ligur was giving a cheeky grin. He poked himself in the chest with a cracked, black fingernail and said, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

            Crowley rolled his eyes. “Huh. Death.” He turned ahead again and kicked his way forward. He mumbled, “That bastard. Doing this crap to people. ‘Cept he didn’t even show up to my—”

            He stopped and Ligur walked into him.

            “Holy crap.”

            “Holy crap! Where?” Ligur cried.

            “Shutup. No. Death. He didn’t—did he show up for you? When you died?”

            Ligur scratched his chin. “Tall bony fellow?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Can’t say I remember seein’ him. Just a lot of myself, disintegrating onto the floor—you had such nice floors, all shiny, got a real good look at them while I was melting—”

            “Death didn’t show up.” Crowley frowned. “He usually does, you know.”

            “Can’t say I’m much of an expert on his policy.”

            “No, he definitely does. I met him once.”

            “Oohoo, look at me, AJ Crowley, I met Death himself and a whole cast of underworld celebrities while I was stopping the Apocalypse!”

            “Shutup, _Ligur!_ This might _mean_ something! Death didn’t bring us here. Maybe he’ll be _mad_ about that. Maybe since he never actually brought us on to the afterlife himself, we’re not really entirely dead!”

            “Huh. Might be onto something there.”

            “Maybe we can meet with him—talk to him—at least get his word on what’s going on. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Death likes to get his way. And if this is not his way—well—” Crowley grinned. “That might just be a good thing for us.”

            “I suppose he could be here somewhere,” Ligur said. “Might have a beach condo or somethin’ in the angel and demon afterlife that he visits from time to time.”

            “Okay, if you know what a beach condo is, then I’m not letting you get away with calling things antiquated names anymore.”

            “I heard Aziraphale call a movie theater a nickelodeon once. You know we get mixed up sometimes.”

            Crowley’s mouth quirked. “Yeah. He does that a lot. That’s not as bad as the time he said he wanted to show me a ‘peep show’.”

            “Stupid angel.”

            “No, you know what he is? A brilliant angel.” Crowley beamed. “He’s our ticket to a backstage meet-and-great with Death himself.”

            Ligur beamed also. “Ooh. You’re finally gonna kill the angel?”

            “What? No! Oh my—just, be quiet for the next ten hours, all right? No, Aziraphale will know how to get in contact with him—without dying. I just know it.”

            “Great!” Ligur said, exaggeratedly enthusiastic. “And how do we get in contact with _him?_ ”

            “Oh.”

            “ _Right_.”

            Crowley leaned against a tree and scratched his head. Ligur leaned against another tree and copied him mockingly.

            “Well,” Ligur said. “We could maybe contact Hastur. And I bet he’d be able to run into Death. What with his history of killings and all. I bet Death’s a big fan.”

            Crowley was wondering how he could manage to leave Ligur out of the meeting with the actual Grim Reaper without the other demon knowing it when they heard a bell.

            “Not another one!”

            The bell stopped.

            Ligur grabbed Crowley’s arm and started pulling him. “It’s one of Hastur’s tortures! If we’re quick we can get there before he kills ‘em and maybe Death will show up then!”

            Crowley really didn’t feel like watching someone die today, but Ligur may have had a point. The last time they’d seen a demon die they had only watched it from the afterlife. Maybe Death showed up in the other world. Maybe he didn’t always talk to you before he sent you on your way. Or maybe he did, and they had both somehow forgotten, as though Death came with his own amnesia. Crowley had often had the feeling he’d met Death before, aside from just the brief time at the Apocalypse, but he couldn’t remember. Death felt familiar. Maybe that was just the way his life had been going.

            Having had more experience moving in the afterlife now, they caught up with the bell’s intermittent rings quickly. The angels and Z, of course, were off building the next place, so they didn’t seem to have noticed the eminent new arrival yet. He was a demon with large ram horns, and he kept flashing in and out of existence, the bell going on and off. Ligur squinted his eyes so hard that his whole face grew wrinkled, and focused.

            “See Hastur?” Crowley asked.

            “Yep. Huh. He dunt look like he’s enjoying it much.”

            “ _Great._ ”

            Ram-horns popped back into the afterlife, screaming. After a moment he stopped. He straightened up from his previously cowering position and blinked around him. Half a smile formed on his face.

            “Huh—”

            “ _Hi I’m AJ Crowley and don’t panic but you’re about to die and I just need to know if—_ ”

            And right as the other demon was turning to face him, he zapped out of existence.

            “Yep,” Ligur said, still squinting into the living world. “He brought ‘im back.”

            “ _Crap_.” Crowley started pacing. “Still no sign of Death?”

            “Not a skull in sight.”

            Crowley stopped walking. He rubbed his chin. “Maybe he—maybe he really doesn’t show up for us. Demons, I mean. Maybe not angels either.”

            “He should be back here soon,” Ligur said. “Hastur’s askin’ him all sorts of questions bought what he sees. But the guy is too confused to answer him right. Stop hittin’ him, Hastur, it’s too distracting!”

            “Wait. I have an idea.”

            Crowley waited for the demon to flash back. As soon as he did, he seized him by the shoulders. The guy gave a startled yelp.

            “Tell him that you see us,” Crowley said urgently. “Tell him Crowley and Ligur are here and he won’t hurt you anymore. Tell him—tell him he has to find Aziraphale.”

            “Wait—what?” Ligur said.

            “Tell him to find Aziraphale and ask him about the—”

            “What? Who are you?” the demon said. “Why aren’t I in pain anymore? What’s going—”

            And then he disappeared.

            “Dammit.”

            “You’re sending Hastur to get your angel?” Ligur said. “Oh, this oughtta go well.”

            “It’s our only chance. Aziraphale knows how to do this, this thing. At least I’ve seen him reading about it. I always wanted him to try it out, but he said it would be rude. I think he might have been scared.”*

*Crowley had also been scared, but there was no point in bringing that up now.

            “So we’ll send Hastur,” Ligur said, “to get the angel, to get Death. And they’ll talk to him and figure out what’s going on.”

            “Yes.”

            “And we won’t have to talk to any of them at all. We can just sit back and watch.”

            “Yes.”

            Ligur grinned. “I knew you must be good for something, serpent, and if it’s the sin of sloth then so be it.”

            The demon popped back into the afterlife.

            Crowley yelled at him, “ _Tell him he needs Aziraphale to do the Rite of AshkEnte!_ ”

            The demon faded. He was gone for just a second. Then he reappeared.

            This time the bell kept ringing.

            “What _was_ that?” he said.

            “Did you say it?” Crowley seized him by the shoulders again and shook him. “Did you tell him?”

            “He told ‘im!” Ligur said, excited. “He told ‘im everything! Hastur knows!”

            “What did Hastur say?”

            “He said ‘who the bloody hell is Aziraphale.’”

            “What?”

            “Not everyone knows who your boyfriend is, snake.”

            “He’s an important Principality!”

            “He’s really not,” Ligur said with a smirk.

            “Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Ram-horns asked.

            “Right—sorry—erm, how are you feeling?” Crowley asked, feeling incredibly guilty and awkwardly relieved at the same time.

            “A lot better than I was a few moments ago,” the demon said. “Say, where is this place? Have I been saved? I was sure Duke Hastur was gonna kill me.”

            Crowley and Ligur stood in awkward silence.

            The bell was still ringing. Then there was another familiar sound, one of the few that existed from the afterlife. It was the sound of wings.

            “We need to get out of here,” Ligur said.

            “What? Wait, don’t leave me! You saved me, right? You can tell me what’s going on? What is going on!”

            “Er, _they_ can,” Crowley said, giving him a smile and gesturing towards the sound of approaching wings. Then he and Ligur legged it out of there as fast as they could.


	7. Death on Two Legs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Ligur finally bring Hastur and Aziraphale together. Because maybe putting more brains together will help them think of something. And what they think of is that they need to ask one more, much more experienced brain for help.

            It only took Hastur a little while to figure out who Aziraphale was.*

*Because, as Crowley made sure to point out to Ligur, he _was_ significant, at least on Earth.

            It took him a lot longer to decide whether or not he was actually going to go and see him.

            “What’s taking so long?” Crowley said, pacing again. “Is he scared?”

            “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s just dreading talking to a bloody angel.”

            Ligur was still peering into the living world. He looked the way Aziraphale did when he was reading a book he had been waiting to get his hands on for decades.

            “You didn’t watch him before, did you?” Crowley said. “I mean, you must have seen him at least once, when you touched him and he went berserk. But you didn’t watch him _often_. Not after that. I can tell by the way you look at him now, like you’ve been starving. Why not?”

            Ligur didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he said, “I was too busy plotting my revenge on you. Watching you floundering around in life made me okay with the fact that I was dead. Hey, he’s moving! Hastur’s leaving!”

            They followed him to the angel’s bookshop. The duke lingered for a while outside of the door, his hands in his pockets, hunched in a much more Ligur- than Hastur-like-way. Ligur was about to flick him on the forehead again. Before he could, Hastur scowled, grumbled something, and barreled his way through the door.

            The bell clanged. Crowley and Ligur floated through the door, Crowley biting his lip as he waited. Ligur was shaking from silent laughter, every now and then repeating, “Ooh, this _really_ ought to be good!”

            Aziraphale’s voice from the back of the shop, sounding even more irritated than usual, snapped, “We’re closed!”

            Hastur’s brow formed itself into a ‘V’ shape and he stalked into the back room. Crowley dithered for a moment, then hastily followed. Ligur came after him last, snickering all the way.

            Aziraphale had his nose buried in a stack of books on haunted places throughout Europe. His face was red. Without looking up, he said, “I mean it, we’re—”

            “Now you shut up and listen, you pretentious feathered oaf,” Hastur hissed.

            Aziraphale stood up so quickly that he upturned his desk and the seven books stacked on it. They slid to the floor with a crash, but it was nearly drowned out by the angel shouting, “ _You!_ ”

            “Normally I’d rather eat my own tongue than talk with the likes of you but I—”

            Aziraphale, shaking, grabbed the nearest object* to him and brandished it at Hastur like a knife.

*It was, of course, a book. At least it had rather sharp corners.

            “—I’m here for a reason, and I won’t take no for an answer,” Hastur was saying.

            “You—” And this time, Aziraphale’s voice was low and quivering. He always did get quiet when he was truly angry, Crowley thought. In spite of the ridiculousness of the scene, he still somehow managed to be scary. Even Hastur stopped speaking. “You—you get out.”

            Hastur crossed his arms and sneered at him. “Or what? You’ll hit me with a—”

            He was silenced by being smacked in the chest by the sharp corner of a very heavy book.

            Aziraphale had already grabbed another one. “I mean it—get out, or I—I don’t know what I’ll do—”

            “We’ve got to stop this,” Crowley said, looking around for something he could use to get their attention.

            “Stop what?” Ligur said.

            “This! Hastur just got hit in the head with another book, he’s probably got a concussion, don’t you care?”

            Ligur shrugged. “The bastard’s been alive all this time and I haven’t. He had it coming.”

            “I’m trying to tell you why I’m here—” Hastur was saying, crossing his arms in front of his face.

            “You—what you did to Crowley—” Aziraphale sounded enraged. He had tears in his eyes. “I—I really think I might kill you. I really think I could.”

            Hastur cackled. “You think you could kill me? The fact that you’re not dead and you’re in my presence should show you that I’m obviously here for some reason _other_ than that. _Luckily enough for you._ ”

            Aziraphale held up another book, and it burst into flames. The angel’s eyes glowed from the glare.

            Hastur gave a start and stepped back. Then, recovering himself, he said, “ _Crowley_ is the one who _sent_ me here.”

            Aziraphale’s eyes widened. The book in his hands smothered out, leaving a wisp of smoke trailing in the air. He said, his voice only air, “What?”

            Crowley sighed in relief.             

            Hastur explained everything that had happened. Aziraphale also told him, though reluctantly, about the burst wine bottles and the Ouija board. Eventually, through much reluctant concession, several more burnt books, and a few warning flicks to the head from Ligur, the angel and demon agreed to work together. They stood across the room from each other the entire time.

            “The Rite of AshkEnte,” Aziraphale said thoughtfully. “That _is_ a good idea. And Crowley always was interested in it. It does sound like something he would say.”

            “I’m telling you,” Hastur growled, “it _was_ the snake who sent me here. If you won’t believe me, then this entire thing is a waste of time.”

            “Pardon me for checking my facts when it comes to things told to me by a demon,” Aziraphale said icily. “Especially you.”

            “Crowley is also a demon.” Hastur crossed his arms and leaned against a bookshelf, which earned him a dirty look from the angel. Hastur went on, “And you don’t seem to have any trouble trusting _his_ word.”

            “Mm.”

            “Why do you care so much about bringing him back, anyway?” Hastur said, in a tone that had grown infuriatingly familiar to Crowley. “A demon?”

            Aziraphale, quite simply, said, “Because we’re friends, of course.”

            Hastur looked taken aback. He looked away and shrugged, his eyes round.

            “He doesn’t know how to mock him when he’s like that,” Ligur said.

            “Yeah,” Crowley replied, staring at his angel. “He always did have a way of making things seem as though they made perfect sense. As though it’s absurd for you to even think of questioning them. I always admired him for that—and hated it.”

            “And I suppose,” Aziraphale said in an airy voice, “that you’re here because you care so much about your—work associate?”

            Hastur grimaced.

            “And then he could always make things that made perfect sense seem doubtful, too,” Crowley said with a dark laugh. “Another thing I envied and hated him for.”

            “Well, he’s missing the part where I _am_ a Duke of Hell,” Ligur said. “And one of the best torturers there, so really he’s just doin’ his civic duty by bringin’ me back.”

            “Right.”

            “I’ll need to collect a few thing before I perform the Rite,” Aziraphale said, flipping through the newest tome he had added to the fixed-desk pile. “A few of the necessary components are difficult to come across.”

            “If you need anything you mamby-pamby angels have qualms about,” Hastur said, “I’ll be only too happy to oblige.”

            “Touching,” Aziraphale said, eying him from over his glasses. “But that really won’t be necessary.”

            Hastur squirmed. “You mean I have to just sit and wait? Give me _something_ to do.”

            “All right. Talk to some ghosts.”

            Hastur grinned like a pumpkin. “Perfect. I’ll just go make some—”

            “ _No_. They have to be old ghosts. Ones who have been around for a while.” Aziraphale was still combing through the book, hardly looking at Hastur, entirely unconcerned that there was a Duke of Hell sitting across from him. Hastur looked Bothered. “I want to know if ghosts can talk to each other,” Aziraphale said. “If there’s a sort of ghost network. Presumably there is, since Ligur and Crowley have run across each other.” He gave Hastur another pointed look. “If I find that demon of yours has been harassing my friend, I will have _words_ with him when he gets back.”

            “Oh, no, words. A demon’s bane,” Hastur said, sarcastically, but looking just a bit worried, nonetheless.

            “I don’t understand why Crowley hasn’t simply contacted me again, but from the fact that he was seemingly cut off last time, and that he has now resorted to contacting _you_ instead, I assume there’s something or some _one_ preventing him. Perhaps Death himself. Perhaps because I’m an angel? Regardless, I think talking to other ghosts if we possibly can would still prove beneficial.”

            Crowley gave Ligur a look, and the demon, begrudgingly, accepted that the angel might be fairly intelligent after all.

            “Check all of these places. They should give you the best chance of finding something.”

            Hastur accepted the bundle of papers with the expression of a child who has just been given unexpected holiday homework.

            Aziraphale stared at his desk, brow furrowed. Then, with a start, he looked up, into the air—just a little to the left of where Crowley was standing, watching him. Crowley almost took a step forward, staring back at him longingly, but he stopped himself.

            “I—” the angel stuttered. “I _will_ find them. The things to perform the Rite. Quickly.”

            This time Crowley almost walked all the way over to him, but Ligur grabbed his arm.

            “They’ll be alerted if we interfere,” he said. Then he looked at Hastur.

            Hastur nodded at Aziraphale, his eyes narrowed. He said, “Good.”

 

            Crowley and Ligur were roaming the Earth, looking for places where they could rip holes into it.

            “Kill joy…bad guy…” Ligur sang.*

*We will use this word generously because it is wrong to speak ill of the dead.

            “It feels thin here,” Crowley said. “I guess. I don’t know. How am I supposed to tell?”

            “Big talkin’…small fry…”

            “I guess technically I’m _not_ ‘supposed’ to.” He sat down on his imagined plane with a huff. “That’s the whole point.”

            Ligur stopped singing and stood next to him with his hands behind his back.

            “And before you say anything,” Crowley said, “I know, demon’s aren’t supposed to care about what they are and aren’t supposed to do. But do you see the hypocrisy in that? Being a rebel because you’ve pledged yourself to a group of rebels and you’re afraid you’ll get in trouble if you don’t— _rebel?_ ”

            “Actually, I was just gonna say, if it’s ‘Death on Two Legs’, what did he expect it to be? Death on four? Did he think Death was some kind of cat?”

            Crowley put his chin in his hands and let out a puff of air, and Ligur sat down next to him.

            “We’ve really gotta get you back to that angel,” Ligur said. “I don’t think I can keep up with your constant philosolophical questioning the way he can.”

            Crowley’s cheek twitched as he tried to fight back half a smile.

            “Y’know,” Ligur said, “if what we need is tearing down reality, the two of us might be pretty good at that. Eh? Cause, I mean, you’re good at the questioning reality part, and I’m, well, I’m a pretty damned good tearer-downer, if I do say so myself.”

            Crowley gestured to the open air. “Go ahead.”

            Ligur wrinkled his nose. He hunched himself over and stuck his elbows out, fists clenched, as though he were preparing to lift something heavy. He sniffed, rolled his sleeves up, then returned his arms to their ready position. He screwed up his eyes.

            Then he started clawing at the air.

            Crowley watched him for a moment. Then he conjured up the radio and started playing Queen. Ligur clawed. Eventually he turned and glared at him.

            “No luck?” Crowley asked.

            “S’not so easy as it looks.”

            “What, failing?”

            Ligur grumbled grouchily and stomped over towards the radio. He picked it up as though to turn it off, but then set it down again. It was playing one of his favorites.*

*‘Liar’, which he liked because he said it sounded like they were saying ‘Ligur’ over and over again. Crowley wondered how closely he had listened to the rest of the lyrics.

            “Speaking of the inherent hypocrisy in demons,” Crowley said, standing, “I’ll bet the reason you can’t tear apart reality is because you _don’t_ question things. At all. You just do as you’re told. Worse, you do as you _think_ you’re told, which isn’t even really what anyone else wants you to do at all, it’s just following fake rules that are, quite frankly, disturbed.”

            “What d’you mean?”

            “I mean, you and Hastur have always been the worst of it. The whole ‘Hell is full of evil monsters’ thing.”

            “Why, thank you.”

            “No! You don’t have to be awful to get people to question Heaven, you know. That’s the whole reason it’s worth questioning! All you have to do is find its flaws! Instead, you two go around making a bad name for us by acting like people should want to belong to a side that _tortures_ its people.”

            Ligur put his hands on his sides. “Hell’s _supposed_ to have a bad name, Crowley. Y’know why? Cause Heaven’s the _good_ name. And we don’t _like_ it.”

            “That’s not what I—”

            “And you’re honestly tryin’ to tell me that because I do what I _think_ I’m supposed to do, which is not actually _what_ I’m supposed to do, but rather, something I thought up for _myself_ —in other words, _exactly what I want_ —then that makes me _not_ a rebel? That makes me some sort of a sycophant?”

            Crowley brushed him off and turned away.

            Ligur kept clawing at the air. “It’s—not—working—anyway. How am I supposed to tear a random whole in the bloody fabric of reality in some random place?”

            “Maybe that’s the problem. You’re not emotionally invested. Not like you were when—”

            “Don’t say it! I don’t have emotions! Shut up!”

            “You’re throwing a temper tantrum,” Crowley snapped. “That’s as emotional as it gets.”

            Ligur sat on the ground and stopped talking. Crowley was actually surprised. He gave him a quizzical look.

            “Can’t believe I thought you’d get us out of here,” Ligur mumbled.

            “Something I’ve been wondering,” Crowley said. “Did you actually know Hastur was going to kill me?”

            Ligur shrugged.

            “I mean, you only saw him the one time before I came along, right? Which I still think is weird.”

            Ligur said nothing.

            “Unless,” Crowley said, “you actually _don’t_ care that much about him, and you’ve actually been telling the truth this whole time.”

            There are few things ‘proper’ demons like Ligur hate more than being accused of telling the truth. Ligur didn’t reply. His face got a tight look to it, like he was trying to keep it as still as possible, trying to keep back whatever was bubbling up behind the mask. Crowley recognized this, to his own surprise, because he had made that same exact face many times, and he knew what it felt like. It was the same face he made whenever Aziraphale had said something like ‘But of course, you wouldn’t be interested in anything as sentimental as all that’, or something along the lines of ‘So sorry to have kept you, my dear, you must be terribly bored listening to me jabber’ or ‘Don’t worry, I know you wouldn’t understand.’

            “If,” Crowley said, treading lightly, out of empathy or simply the desire to avoid a row, he wasn’t sure, “if you really didn’t know if Hastur was doing anything, if anyone was doing anything to try to find you, or to avenge you, then why were you honestly just watching me? Why didn’t you try to get out on your own?”

            “You really think you would have walked into this empty plane and thought ‘I’ll just have to find a way out’ if I hadn’t put it into your desolate head?” Ligur said. “I didn’t spend all of my time watching you, you know.”

            “Then what did you do?”

            Ligur looked and sounded more like a person than he ever had. “D’you know, it’s honestly possibly to do absolutely nothing? Nothing at all.”

            “Yeah,” Crowley said with a laugh. “I slept through almost a whole century once.”

            “No, you don’t. I’ve seen you. Sleep’s not the same. Whenever you woke up you looked like something. Scared or happy or annoyed or—or longing, I think, sometimes—like you’d been thinkin’ of something the whole time or now you were just startin’ to think again, now you’d woken up. I mean doing _nothing_. Just sittin’ and staring and no thoughts at all.”

            Crowley pressed his lips together and stared at the demon, who was staring off into space.

            “ _That’s_ torture,” Ligur said quietly. “’Cept it’s not. There’s no pain. It’s worse than that.”

            Crowley wavered. He put a hand to the back of his head—then he reached down and offered it to Ligur. Ligur ignored it. Crowley sighed. He said, “It wasn’t until I mentioned you that Hastur actually killed me.”

            Ligur blinked. “What?”

            “Oh, he was getting close.” Crowley closed his eyes and tried not to remember the moment he was describing. “He would go closer and closer, the way he did with those poor sods we’d see showing up here. He was saying all sorts of things, like ‘This is for ignoring the orders of our great Master’ and ‘Now I have nothing to work towards, you little shit’ and all kinds of things like that. But something was _missing_. And I’m an idiot. As you so enjoy pointing out to me. And curious. You know what they say, ‘curiosity killed the cat’.”

            “Do they really say that? Humans are so stupid—”

            “Shutup, Ligur. He kept blaming me for the world surviving and him having to keep living in it and he kept that up until finally I said, ‘What, so this wasn’t about Ligur, like, at _all?_ ’” Crowley opened his eyes. “Then he stopped stalling and drawing it out. He snapped, I saw it in his eyes. He just killed me.”

            Ligur sniffed. “That’s sloppy demon work.”

            “Yep. You made him sloppy.”

            Ligur lowered his head. He looked as though he didn’t know how to feel about this.

            _At least he’s feeling something at all_ , Crowley thought, and then, as though feelings were contagious, it all hit him, truthful for the first time, and he thought, _Dying was terrifying and I wish I’d never done it_.

            He shuddered, then shook himself out of it as best he could, because he’d done it to Ligur, too. He grabbed him by the arm and pulled him, less resisting now, to his feet.

            “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go see if Hastur’s found out anything.”

 

            They found Hastur out wandering around the moors in the middle of absolute nowhere. The chances of someone having died here were both inevitable due to the barrenness of the landscape and extremely unlikely since it was improbable any human had ever ventured here at all. Or, that was what Crowley thought, until he remembered that humans went absolutely everywhere.

            “We have them to thank for giving us the slightest chance of getting out of here, really,” he said. “The angels won’t help us. It’s just ghosts. Humans _invented ghosts_. Only people who were human once want to get back to the living world. I guess cause humans are the only ones out of us who really live.”

            Ligur was watching Hastur. The still living duke was standing on the top of a hill, the wind rustling his coat. He didn’t look like some sort of period drama hero. He looked like he was falling apart at the seams. There was a haggard look in his eye and his mouth had developed a quirk. Even still, he didn’t look intimidating, as he would have liked. He looked sad.

            “They invented Ouija boards,” Crowley said. “Anything we’ve done to get in contact with them, we got from stories _they_ told first.”

            “All right,” Ligur said, a bit of a snarl to his voice. He was staring at Hastur.

            Crowley looked at him too. The duke raised his hands to his face. It wasn’t a sudden breakdown or a gesture that was even involuntary. It was deliberate, clutching at his face, as though he were _willing_ himself to break down, because it was better than carrying on, but too difficult to stop. He stood still on the moor, suspended in the inability to be the way he was.

            “We,” Crowley said, watching him, “are not equipped for this.”

            “Don’t you dare include yourself in this ‘we’. You’re not like us. You made sure of that a long time ago.”

            Crowley didn’t bother to argue.

            Ligur was struggling with something. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Hastur.

            Crowley, instead, looked away. He watched Ligur’s face instead. He didn’t know why it was easier. Perhaps because it was more familiar.

            Ligur tilted his head a little. “I miss him.” He paused. “It’s stupid.”

            Crowley sighed. He said, tired and irritated but without too much rancor, “You can call it stupid. You don’t have to call it love. But really, why don’t you just get it over with?”

            Ligur snapped back to his old self, defensive and pettish and yet somehow smug, and said, “Demons don’t do that.” And Crowley wondered if that was why he ever admitted to things at all, purely so he could argue with Crowley when he tried to encourage him.

            Crowley just rolled his eyes.

            “Since the Fall,” Ligur went on, “the entire six thousand years of my existence has been _opposed_ to that.”

            “Not really.”

            Ligur looked at him in disbelief.

            “It wasn’t anti-love or anti-goodness or anything like that,” Crowley said. “It was just anti-forced-goodness, because then it was faked. It was just for freedom, at least at first, that’s what it was supposed to be. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.”

            “Well hoody-hoo, good for you, little miss honorable motives.”

            “You bought into that stuff.” Crowley stared at him intensely, daring him to even try to look away, and maybe because of the way this place worked, Ligur didn’t seem able to. “All the dark things humans thought demons were. ‘Welcome to my Twisted Mind’ except with less _style_. The monstrosities humans thought demons were, you let yourself become that. You didn’t _have_ to. It wasn’t the plan. You just followed along with the way things were going. _Sauntering vaguely downwards into a pit of mud and muck_ like you couldn’t be bothered to try to become anything else.”

            Ligur looked a bit wild when he replied, “ _And you think I don’t know that?_ You think I don’t know I messed up somewhere along the way? You think _I_ think I’m not corrupted? I know what I am.”

            Crowley, taken aback, was temporarily speechless. Ligur, for a second, wore an expression that almost oozed _Now I have you where I want you_. And then it faded away. It was hard to keep up pretense when you saw eternity in an empty void stretching out in front of you. He looked, just like Ligur. Pettish and irritable. And he snapped, “At least I didn’t buy into all the sappy lies about ‘goodness and truth’, like you.”

            “It made me better for it,” Crowley said like a reflex, and what an unnatural reflex it was for a demon, but hell, what did he care. Truth at last.

            “I know I’m a mess,” Ligur said. “That’s why I like messes. You try to be too many things at once, Crowley. You’re all bits and pieces. At least I’m _whole_. A whole bastard, but still, that’s better than nothing, eh? At least I don’t care about things. I don’t c—I don’t—”

            He seemed to be choking. Crowley walked over to him and shook him by the shoulders, but Ligur pushed him off with a glare.

            “You can’t even say it, can you?” Crowley said. “You can’t lie anymore. You don’t know what you are, Ligur. And take it from someone else who’s clueless—that might just be your best hope.”

            Ligur wrapped his arms around himself and glared at him. Crowley looked away and instantly regretted it, and he realized why he hadn’t walked away from him ages ago, why he kept hanging around someone he couldn’t stand—because the rest of the world was empty and anything was better than that. The Earth had vanished again and all they saw was nothingness.

            Invisible to them both, Hastur stared out across the moors.

 

            “Everything’s ready.” Aziraphale bustled around the back room of his shop, wringing his hands. “Now. How do we let them _know?_ ”

            “We’re _here_ , you idiot,” Crowley said. “Do you really think we wouldn’t be watching you? Where d’you think we’d’ve gone, the afterlife’s froyo shop?”

            “Are you sure they have to _be_ here?” Hastur said. “Couldn’t we do it without them? I mean, it’s not like they’ve been able to talk to us all that much anyway.”

            “He doesn’t want us watching ‘im when he’s not aware,” Ligur said. “Seein’ him talking about us, and stuff. About trying to get us back.”

            “How do you know?”

            “It’s how I’d be.”

            Crowley nodded, respecting their mutual unspoken agreement to not push each other farther than that.

            Hastur was walking around the circle Aziraphale had drawn on the floor in chalk. He passed near Crowley, who backed off to give him space, but still he shivered.

            “D’you ever think they’ve been here this whole time?” Hastur said to the angel, whispering, as though that would help. “Watching us?”

            Aziraphale actually looked as though he hadn’t considered this. His eyes widened and his eyebrows raised, and Crowley almost laughed. It was such an idiotic thing, to not have thought of it, but there was his angel. Crowley almost even smiled.

            “Do you think,” Ligur said, also, inanely, whispering, “That when you’re back, you’ll still say things? The kind of things you’ve been saying around him when you know he can almost hear you, but can’t see you? Like you’re only half there, so it’s only half real?”

            Crowley considered this. It would be different, knowing Aziraphale could see his face. Knowing, also, that they might actually see each other again. He said, “I don’t think I’ve actually said that much.”

            “Really?” Ligur said, stunned.

            _Not as much as I’d like_ , Crowley thought. _Not half as much as I feel_. Still, it would be different.

            Crowley felt the ghost of an accelerated heartbeat, something trying to warn him of something. _Of what? Of missing an opportunity? Am I afraid I’m going to be too cowardly all over again?_ He almost laughed again. _If I do ever get out of here, I’d better remember this, or the next time I die and realize it’s too late_ again _I’ll never be able to live with myself._

            So Crowley said, “Yeah. I think I will.”

            “All right.” Aziraphale sounded terribly worried. “I think I’m ready.”

            The four of them, two invisible to the rest, stood around the circle. The angel, surrounded by demons, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His brow furrowed. He put his hands together and held them in front of his face.

            “You’re not praying, are you?” Hastur said, aghast.

            “Shush.”

            Aziraphale started murmuring something. The circle started to glow. The light hit Ligur’s toes where he had accidentally stepped over the chalk, and he had to jump backwards. Even Hastur was starting to look a little frightened, and Crowley would have been shaking had he still had a body. Only Aziraphale wasn’t staring into the circle with apprehension. His eyes were still closed. Without looking, he reached towards the desk behind him and picked up something. It was Crowley’s sunglasses.

            Crowley felt the awkward sensation of needing to blush but not being physically capable of doing so.

            A _WHOOSH_ startled them all so badly that each of them jumped, Aziraphale and even the ghosts included. Every light in the room went out. Hastur gave a strangled and startled snarl. Aziraphale shushed him again, clattering around on his desk as he backed away from the circle. Ligur and Crowley, only able to see each other now in the darkness, met each other’s eye.

            The room was pitch black.

            Then there were two dots of shining blue.

            WHAT, said Death, THE BUGGER IS THIS?

            The demons and angel collectively took in a deep breath. Hastur, for some reason, raised his arm and pointed at the skeleton. Aziraphale choked on his own words for a minute.

            Then, collecting himself, he cried out, “What the _fuck_ have you done?”

            Death’s glowing eyes faded out and back in.

            THAT WAS VERY RUDE.

            Hastur, from behind the skeleton, said, in as grandiose of a voice as a Duke of Hell who is absolutely terrified could muster, “We have summoned you here to answer our questions!”

            The Reaper revolved on the spot. It regarded Hastur with gleaming eyes.

            THAT WAS ALSO TERRIBLY RUDE OF YOU.

            All four of them dithered. Finally, Crowley got up the nerve to approach the skeleton. He walked around Hastur and stood directly in front of Death.

            Death did not seem to notice.

            “We—we just have a few questions,” Aziraphale said, perhaps deciding that his previous tone would not be beneficial to them.

            Death turned back to him and gave him a quizzical look.

            PRACTICING WIZARDRY, NOW, AZIRAPHALE, ARE YOU?

            “He knows his name,” Crowley said, anxious. Again, Death did not appear to notice him.

            “He can’t see us,” Ligur said. “Can he?” And then he began to grin.

            Death’s grin, though less weasely, was even more unnerving. It was boring into Aziraphale and the angel swallowed nervously. “Erm,” he said. “We wanted to talk to you about the afterlife.”

            AND I THOUGHT YOU WERE MORE OF THE EXPERT ON THOSE MATTERS. ANGELS DO STILL RUN HEAVEN, DO THEY NOT?

            “Er, not _that_ afterlife.”

            Death’s eyes became a sharp glint as he turned to Hastur.

            YOURS, THEN, DUKE HASTUR?

            “Er—y-you know me?” Hastur said.

            LET US SAY THAT I AM FAMILIAR WITH YOUR WORK.

            Hastur also gulped and gave a little smile.

            Aziraphale’s hands were shaking, but he had grabbed Crowley’s sunglasses again. His hand tightened around them and he steadied himself against the desk behind him. “I need to know,” he said. “I don’t care if you’re not supposed to tell us, or about ineffability, or about anything like that. I need to know, because he’s been contacting me, and _don’t you dare get him in trouble for that_ , because if he’s been contacting me then that means something isn’t right and if it’s not right then it needs to be fixed. _Where is Crowley?_ ”

            Death’s glowing eyes blinked once more.

            And then, Aziraphale, his eyes watering, said, in a small voice, “Why did you have to take him?”

            Death, slowly, raised one bony hand and stroked his chin.

            “Why,” Aziraphale said, “does he have to _stay_ dead?”

            CROWLEY IS DEAD?

            Hastur gave a nervous chuckle. Aziraphale blinked.

            Crowley’s jaw dropped. “Um,” he said. “Excuse me?” Then he went and waved his hands in front of Death’s face.

            Death stared right through him at Aziraphale.

            “Y—you mean you didn’t know?” the angel stammered.

            “How can that be?” Hastur said. “You—you are Death, aren’t you? _The_ Death? Not just one of his minions?”

            THERE’S JUST ME.

            “But where is _Crowley?_ ” Aziraphale cried.

            I DON’T KNOW. I DIDN’T TOUCH HIM.

            “This must be some mistake,” Hastur said. “I killed him myself, and I assure you, he was _very dead_.”

            Aziraphale glared at him. But, the angel’s admittedly puissant glaring powers aside, it was probably the glint in Death’s eyes as he looked at the demon that made him take a step back.

            YOU DO HAVE A HABIT OF MAKING ME RATHER BUSY, DON’T YOU?

            “But then where has Crowley gone?” Aziraphale exclaimed.

            “Yeah,” Crowley said. “Where have I gone? Has this all been some kind of a _farce?_ ”

            “If I find out I’m not dead after all of this,” Ligur said, “I’ll wish I bloody was.”

            “Wait wait wait,” Hastur said. “What about Ligur? Duke of Hell? He’s dead, too. Has been for bloody ages. What did you do with _him?_ ”

            I DO NOT ESCORT DEMONS AFTER THEIR DEMISE.

            “Well,” Hastur said stuffily, “that’s bloody racist.”

            “Demons aren’t a race, Hastur.”

            “Shutup angel. It’s wrong, s’what it is.”

            DEMONS AND ANGELS DO NOT DIE. I DO NOT LEAD THEM ANYWHERE. THEY SIMPLY CEASE TO EXIST. NOW, IF YOU EXCUSE ME, I WAS JUST IN THE MIDDLE OF A VERY GOOD CHAPTER—

            “Well they _are_ existing,” Aziraphale said. “They’ve been haunting us from beyond the grave, or wherever it is they’ve gone to. Both of them have been killed, neither Heaven nor Hell has heard any sign of them, nor do they expect to, but they’ve been contacting us. It is, without a doubt, them. So what do you have to say to that?”

            Death took a step towards him, excruciatingly slowly. Aziraphale held his own as best he could. The knuckles on his hand that was holding Crowley’s sunglasses had gone white.

            Crowley stepped towards him and put his hand on the angel’s.

            Death stared at him for a long time.

            HMM.

            “’Hmm’? That’s all you have to say?” Hastur cried. “Where’s my—where’s bloody Ligur? What is going _on?_ ”

            Ligur was giggling. Crowley almost admired him for his lack of fear. As soon as he had realized that Death couldn’t see him, the demon had been enjoying himself immensely.

            PERHAPS ANGELS AND DEMONS DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF THINGS AS MUCH AS YOU HAVE BEEN LED TO BELIEVE UP UNTIL THIS POINT.

            “Yes,” Aziraphale said, “but don’t you want answers? Aren’t you offended? This is your duty, dealing with people once they die, and part of your charge has been taken from you!”

            Ligur stepped forward and regarded the reaper. He waved a hand right through his skull.

            Death’s eyes burned more brightly and he leaned backwards, with the creaking of many bones.

            “Haven’t you always wondered,” Aziraphale said, “where people go when they die? Not just Heaven or Hell, but where they’re really going to _go_ , once everything is over. Where angels and demons go and where some humans go when you know they’re not going to Heaven or Hell but you don’t know _where_. Because that happens, doesn’t it? Ghosts, they’re humans you didn’t get to on time, ones you let get away. People disappear off of your lists, don’t they? Don’t you want to know where they go when you’re not there to send them?”

            The pinpricks in Death’s eyes began to glow so brightly that it hurt even Crowley’s eyes to look at them. He didn’t have to see them straight on to know what they were—Death was, incredibly, irreversibly, _curious_.

            Ligur was grinning. Hastur was wiping the sweat off of his brow. Aziraphale was staring Death down. But Crowley was groaning. Because he had just heard a familiar flapping sound.

            “Waitwaitwait,” said Z, appearing suddenly, snapping almost the whole world out of focus except for him and Ligur, but only almost, because this was the bookshop, and Crowley was still touching Aziraphale’s hand. “ _Stop_.”

            “You can’t do this!” Ligur roared, lunging at the pre-primordial being. “You can’t take this from us! We’ve gotten so bloody close!”

            Before he could reach them, Z held out a hand and touched his forehead. The demon was thrown backwards.

            “I’m sorry,” Z said, sounding worried. They looked almost panicked. “No. I can’t. You _cannot_ do this.”

            Death’s blue eyes were still glowing through the gloom of the afterlife pane.

            TELL ME, he said to Aziraphale, ABOUT THIS CONTACT YOU HAVE MADE WITH THE DEAD.

            “Stop,” Z said, and then everything froze.

            Crowley let go of Aziraphale’s hand with a start. The angel had become a statue. He looked around and realized that Hastur wasn’t moving either, and neither was Death, although he was statuesque most of the time anyway. Z had frozen time. “You can _do_ that?” Crowley exclaimed.

            “This must not _be_ ,” Z said emphatically. “You are interfering with knowledge that creates his very being. You are ripping apart the very fabric of—of—of the way things should be—”

            “Yeah,” Crowley snarled, “and I’ve never done _that_ before.”

            Ligur had picked himself up and stumbled back over to them. “It’s only Death,” he said between gritted teeth. “What’s he got to do with anything? He always keeps to himself anyway.”

            “There are secrets that must not be known,” Z said. “That is the reason you cannot return once you have come here! That is the entire reason! If I allow you to open Death’s mind to these spaces in things—”

            “He’s Death! He’s always known more about the universe anyway! And I’ll tell you this.” Ligur put his hands on his hips. “He’s pretty darn _good_ at keeping secrets!”

            “Death,” Crowley said, “has always been the one who _knew_. The only one who really know how it all _went_.”

            “No one,” Z said, “is the secret knower of all things, left with absolutely no mystery for themselves. What kind of sad existence would that be?”

            Ligur grabbed his hair and pulled, groaning. Z was peering into the living world, assessing the situation. Crowley put a hand to his chin.

            “Oh no one?” he said, channeling as much of Aziraphale’s tone as six-thousand years had taught him. “Oh really? How about _God?_ ”

            Ligur raised his eyebrows. Z made a face. “Erm,” they said. “Well I don’t—I’m not sure that I—”

            “A _ha_.”

            “No ‘aha’,” Z snapped. “That’s beside the point. The whole point! You _cannnot_ tell him.”

            Crowley wished he had a better grasp on his imaginary body so that he could pull his hair, like Ligur was doing, and feel it. He wished his visible form hadn’t vanished moments after Z had appeared and scared him out of his wits. Now he was a floating vague consciousness, invisible and meaningless. He wished he didn’t question everything so much that he didn’t even know himself. He wished he didn’t question things at all. He wished things were easy. He wished he could tear everything apart. He wished he could sleep for a thousand million years.

            Ligur was beating his fists against Z’s arm. “You can’t do this! This isn’t fair! This—is—not—fair!”

            “I’m not life,” Z said simply.

            The living world came back into focus, although Crowley certainly hadn’t tried to see it. Death was still standing frozen in between Hastur and Aziraphale. Z touched their hand to Death’s skull, right between the blue dots of light.

            Time started again. Death looked around.

            WHERE, he said, AM I, AND WHAT IS GOING ON?

            Then the circle on the floor was broken, smeared under Z’s foot, and Death vanished.

            Ligur was still wailing. Hastur looked around, frantic, furious. He was yelling at the angel to do something, to bring him back, to _bring them back_ , and Aziraphale looked dumbfounded. His hands loosened around the pair of shades. He leaned back against his desk and put his other hand to his head.

            Crowley didn’t even bother trying to bring his old physical form back into his imagination. He just let himself slip away. Z was still staring at him, somehow, their eyes full of many things, including, infuriatingly, curiosity.

            Ligur had started to look for Crowley. Crowley ignored him, and Z, who reached out a hand towards where they must know he was. He ignored them all and left as fast as he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I....promise things will get better eventually.


	8. Because You Don't Know

            Crowley stared at Aziraphale.

            He was still invisible, himself. He wasn’t bothering imagining his form anymore and he liked it that way. It was easier to be in the dimension of the dead when you couldn’t see yourself, because then it was almost like _you_ weren’t really there at all.

            It was easier to watch Aziraphale, too. It was worse when he’d had a body. Obnoxious, how much they get in your line of sight, even when you’re not looking at yourself, there’s always your hand or your leg or some part of you getting in your line of vision, and there was always, _always_ some part of yourself getting in the way of your view of the world. Disgusting.

            It was easier to watch Aziraphale when he wasn’t constantly reminded that _he_ was also there.

            The angel was alone. No, he wasn’t bothering him. He wasn’t embarrassing himself. He wasn’t asking for more than the angel wanted to give. Not this time, at least. He wasn’t seeing only the part of Aziraphale that he saved for the corrupting influence of his long-term enemy, the one never to be completely trusted. He wasn’t giving it all away with the expression on his face. He wasn’t betraying himself.

            It was better.

            But that wasn’t true at all. Because it had never been just the angel alone that he had been so enamored with, although that, God, _he_ , had been plenty enough. It had always been even more, because he had been in love with the _way they were together_.

            And he wanted so badly just to talk to him. To give himself away. To betray _everything_.

            Since the catastrophe with Death, Aziraphale hadn’t sat still once. Crowley had fled the scene and when he’d returned to the bookstore later on he’d found it empty, the chalk still on the floor, the door not even locked. It had taken him a strangely long time to locate the angel. He’d found him on the other side of London, walking, briskly with his hands in his pockets, a panicked look on his face. Further inspection had shown that it was actually the expression of someone trying to be deep in thought but only able to find themselves splashing around the shallow end. Aziraphale was trying, someone bless him, trying so hard to think, and, like Crowley had been since their last failure, too, he didn’t seem to be able to come up with anything.

            So he had walked. Fluttering around the whole of London, traveling by train across the countryside, returning back again, only to step one foot into his bookshop, give a shudder and wince, and turn around and leave again. Crowley followed him. Maybe it was selfish, even cruel. He couldn’t tell if his presence was disturbing the angel or not, although he made sure not to get too close to him. A few other standers-by had shivered once or twice when he was near. Crowley wondered if Aziraphale would be just as upset if he left him alone for a while, as time dragged on. The longer he followed him, even though it was surely counterintuitive, the more he was convinced that Aziraphale would search the globe for ideas whether he was with him or not.

            Because there were no more ideas anywhere else in the world than there were in Aziraphale’s bookshop, that was where, after days of aimless wandering, the both of them ended up.

            Aziraphale stood in the middle of his shop. His arms at his side, his fingers moving restlessly, he stared out at the hundreds of books and scrolls and ancient tomes, trying to decide where to start.

            Crowley was at his side, looking at his face in profile. Unable to face him head-on, even when he was hardly even there.

            He heard a bell ring. It was the bell on the door to the store, the one that signaled when customers had arrived, and when all hell was about to break loose. Crowley turned to see who the victim would be, and saw Ligur. The other demon had reached up and tapped the bell, ringing it with an unfathomable look at Crowley, who turned back to watch the angel. Aziraphale hadn’t heard a thing.

            Crowley could sense Ligur as he walked up and stood next to him. The both of them watched Aziraphale think.

            “It’s not just that I was alone,” Crowley said. “It’s not just that he was the one who happened to be there, all those centuries. It’s that—” and he didn’t know why he was saying this, especially here, especially now, except that maybe being dead will just do that to you— “—he was the only one—I wanted to be—”

            Crowley stopped, unable to find the words.

            Ligur looked at him impassively. Then he nodded, and said, “Then we best get you back.”

            Crowley, tearing his gaze away from the angel, raised an eyebrow at him and tried not to sniff. “Since when d’you do the whole ‘caring’ thing?”

            “Since there was nothing better to do,” Ligur grunted. He sneered at Crowley. “Maybe that’s all ‘caring’ has ever been.” He gestured towards Aziraphale. “Talk to him.”

            “No,” Crowley said. “It—it’ll only get us in trouble, _again_ —”

            “So? Those pansies don’t _do_ anything about it ‘cept get peeved with us.”

            “I don’t want them to hurt Aziraphale.”

            Ligur snorted. Crowley grew annoyed, and was surprised to find that he could still even _do_ that.

            “And you think,” Ligur said, “he’s fine and dandy now? That dandy has never been less fine. You’ve seen him these past weeks, dog-earing pages and stuff, leaving tear stains on his books and all. He’s hurting, serpent, and so are you, so why not make him hurt just a teensy bit more if it’ll get you back?”

            Crowley shook his head. He had imagined himself again, then. He choked out, “That’s not—I don’t think it works—”

            “Are you afraid of being selfish? Are you still under the impression that this all is happening inside your head? Yours _alone?_ I’ve watched you, demon, and I’ve watched both of you, that angel too.”

            Crowley bit his lip. He could almost remember the feeling, just a little bit of pain. He stepped forward and put his hand on Aziraphale’s arm.

            This time, it took a moment for the angel to cry, but it wasn’t long. Tears welled up in his eyes. Aziraphale said, “I’m sorry—”

            “No, you—” Crowley began. He shook his head, and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what to tell you, but I need you to _save me_.”

            “I can’t—I want you back so badly.” Aziraphale’s voice had never sounded like that. His eyes were closed and he was shaking. “I want to do whatever I can but I don’t know how, and I don’t know if you can hear me, but _Someone_ , I hope you can—”

            “Just,” Crowley stammered, his own vision blurring. Was he crying? “Just—just keep trying—”

            “And I think—I think I’m losing hope—you’re the only one who was ever any good at that, Crowley, and I need—I need—oh, God—I can’t—I can’t do this—”

            “He’s losing it,” Ligur said. Urgently, “You’re losing him.”

            “I’m—trying,” Aziraphale said. “To hold myself together. But—but it feels like I’m falling apart—I’m sorry, this isn’t what you want to hear. I wish I had something useful to tell you. I wish I could make this better, I just—I don’t even know if you’re here—what am I _doing?_ ”

            “You need to push him more,” Ligur said. “You said it yourself, you can only break this barrier if you get emotional. Make him _feel_ you, Crowley.”

            “I need you to not be reserved, angel,” Crowley said, his voice shaking. “I need you to—to falter, for once, because that would be the least natural thing, that would be the most reality-bending thing, for you to just stop going on the way things are and to try to change them, because you’ve done it once before and it stopped the bloody end of the bloody _world_. And I wish it had been me telling you to stay, back then, back at that base. Cause it’s been me every other time. At least in my head. I’m always the one trying to get you to stay with me, or go with me, wherever I go, and then you, you finally see me about to turn away, and you said ‘stay’, and I did, and look where it left us. And sometimes I wish you hadn’t gotten all the bloody credit, but right now I don’t care, because that’s what I need. I need you to want me to stay.”

            Aziraphale was crying. Crowley, too, somehow, was crying along with him.

            “You’re doing good,” Ligur said.

            “I don’t like this. This feels wrong. This is what I never wanted to do to him. This—it feels like torture.”

            “It isn’t torture if it’s _good_ for you, Crowley!” Ligur burst out, breaking through the quiet. “It’s like exercise! It’s like telling the bloody truth!”

            “How do I know I should trust _you_ , Ligur?” Crowley shouted between gulps of air that were trying to hold back sobs. “Of all people!”

            “ _Oh, shut up, you know you can!_ ”

            Crowley put his other hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder and, through his tears, yelled at him, “I need you to _call me back!_ ”

            Aziraphale knelt down to the ground in an instant. Crowley nearly fell over, not having realized that he had been using the angel for support. Aziraphale was on his knees, bent over, concentrating. He put his hands together, held them to his lips, and started mumbling. And after a few moments of this, the building positively started to shake.         

            “What’s he doing?” Ligur asked, still yelling.

             Crowley got down on his knees in front of him, bending down low so that he could look at his face. The words were quiet, but their power was strong. The wooden panels of the floor were creaking and cracking against each other like they were about to fall to pieces. Books started to clatter down from the shelves.

            Crowley listened.

            “He’s speaking the language of the angels,” he said, shouting over the noise. Horns were blaring from the road outside. This was happening in more than just the bookshop. “He’s—he’s saying something—I think it’s the words of creation. I think I _remember_. Words from the very oldest texts we have about the creation of the world. Except he’s reversing them. He’s tearing them apart.”

            “Why?”

            “Because he’s looking for a way to break the barrier between us.”

            “He—he’s just a Principality, right?” Ligur was crouched, avoiding the narrow shelves with a look of terror, holding both hands over his ears. “How does he know how to do that?”

            “Because he’s been reading those words for thousands of years.” Crowley grinned at Aziraphale’s nearly hidden face. “That’s why he keeps those old rags. So he’ll remember. Because he knows how powerful words are.”

            “Words—words are just made up.”

            “Exactly. Because so is _everything_.”

            Dust started to pour down on them from the ceiling. Something strange was happening to the air, tiny streaks of lightning zipping through it, as though the angel were ripping apart the atmosphere, too. Outside there was screaming. Crowley gripped the angel’s shoulders, starting to be afraid, himself. The building shook again and Ligur fell onto his knees, looking around frantically. Aziraphale kept saying the words.

            Crowley expected Z this time. He wasn’t even anguished at the sight of them. He was almost a little relieved.

            This time he knew they wouldn’t be able to stop him. He wouldn’t stop. He would _not_. He would—Not.

            Z appeared in a brilliant and frantic flash of wings. They glanced around, their radiant eyes wide with alarm. “Hello holy hell,” they said. “What the _heavens?_ ”

            Crowley scrambled to his feet and pointed at them. “Hello,” he said. “He’s tearing the whole world apart. The whole _world_. Because you won’t let me go. Are you still _certain_ that’s the right idea?”

            “You know honestly I’m not so sure,” Z said, still glancing around with a look of surprise.

            “What?” Crowley said, for some reason, because their tone had been impossible to read, like always, and he couldn’t tell if they had really meant it, or if this all meant so little to them that they were _going along with a joke_. “No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to pretend you’re reasonable after all this time. Every single thing I’ve said to you should have proved to you that I don’t belong here, don’t pretend that doubting this all is something _casual_ that you can just _consider_ now like it’s no big _deal_ to you.”

            Z gave him an icy stare. “All right then,” they said. “Would you prefer I stick to my old plan?”

            Crowley shrank. Ligur stood up, steadying himself on a still quaking shelf, and said, “Oh, come on, give ‘im a break! He’s been through hell here!”

            Z rolled their eyes at him, then gestured around the room. “Look at what you two are doing. Can’t you see this is bad? Can’t you see why I tried to prevent this?”

            “So stop it, then,” Crowley said. “Stop time like you stop everything else. If you’re so powerful, then why d’you let me continue to exist? Why not just send me to sleep? You don’t get to act like you’ve given me any sort of _freedom_ , any element of _choice_ , just because you’ve given me two unlivable situations!”

            “This—this is beyond time.”

            “I don’t care,” Crowley shouted, although he did, because Aziraphale was tearing apart the world and time and all existence for him and that mattered to him very much. “ _Look at what he’s doing because of you!_ ”

            “But I don’t need to stop it,” Z said. “One angel—not even a high ranking one, because you all have invented ranks, haven’t you?—one will not be allowed to destroy everything. The others will all stop him if we let this go on. They’ll notice soon enough.”

            “But he won’t stop,” Crowley cried. “Not for good! Not for anything! We don’t _do_ that!”

            “You can’t keep trying things forever,” Z said, dismayed. “It’s tearing you apart! You’ll destroy yourselves!”

            “ _This existence is not ourselves_.”

            “But I’ve told you everything will be okay! If you would only trust me, you—”

            “If you would only listen, you’d know that you’re killing us!” Crowley pointed at Ligur, who was standing by the angel, almost protectively, glaring at Z. Crowley said, “Look at _him_. If you’d listened to him you’d’ve known ages ago that _we need to go home_. You don’t know what we _need_ , Z. You’re not like us! Maybe we’ll understand you someday, but right now you have all the power over us, but you won’t listen! So we’re ripping ourselves apart, yes, but we’ll do it to the world too, and we won’t stop!”

            Z bit their lip, and Crowley wondered where they had learned to do that, when they only had a body for a miniscule fraction of the time.

            “He won’t stop,” Crowley said, “until he finds a way in here to get me, or until it kills him—which would make one more angel in here that you have to deal with, and trust me, if you think _I’m_ persistent—” and he gave a fond and manic laugh, “—wait till you meet _him_.”

            Z made a face. “I—suppose—maybe. But he’ll give up eventually.”

            Crowley pointed at his angel again. He said, tired but soldiering on, “ _Look_ at him.”

            Z looked at Aziraphale.

            They looked at him and Ligur.

            They sighed.

            They said, “Fine.”

            Crowley’s arm dropped to his side. Ligur ran his hand through Aziraphale’s head, and the angel stopped speaking. The shaking of the world gradually stopped.

            Crowley opened his mouth. “Er—what?”

            Z just stared at him.

            Ligur, who was running his hand back and forth through the angel’s head now, presumably to stop him from undoing all of creation, but also because old habits die hard, said, “I think we’ve won. You can stop showing off how much the angel ‘cares’ about you now.”

            Crowley took a few steps backward, away from Z. Z tilted their head and looked at him. There was that curiosity again.

            “And you,” they said, gesturing to Ligur. “Your friend. He’s been causing me enough grief, too.”

            “Well,” Ligur said, grinning, “he may not kill himself out of grief that I’m gone—”

            “That’s not what I _meant_ ,” Crowley interjected.

            “—but he is,” Ligur continued with a positively evil grin, “going to go through every angel and demon who gets in his way while he’s trying to figure this out.”

            Crowley winced. Z looked revolted at the idea.

            “That means a whole lot of people are going to die and you’ll have to—”

            “Yes, I _get_ it.” Z put a hand to their forehead and groaned. “Shit. Yes. I was—fairly convinced with the angel, but that settles it for good. That demon is a maniac. He’ll fill this place with premature dead demons before I can blink twice.”

            “And angels, probably,” Ligur said, airily. “Yeah, he’ll probably start a war over me. And that’ll mean even more for you to deal with, and—”

            “All right, all right,” Z snapped. “Fine. You can go back.”

            Crowley groaned and ran a hand across his face, trying to comprehend. Aziraphale was clutching at his head now, rocking back and forth. Crowley pointed at Ligur and said, “You, stop that,” then he pointed at Z and said, “And you—” Then he made his expression much more pitiful and said, “Um—how?”

            Z sighed. “I’ll think of something. He’s not the only one who remembers the words of creation.”

            They stared at them. Z looked disdainful.

            “I told you. I’ve been around for a long time. And it doesn’t feel like _long ago_ to me.”

            “So—you’re—going to let us go back?” Crowley’s voice was small. He felt so tired, and so scared. Even more scared than he had this entire time. This felt like the endgame, and if he messed this up—

            But Z was already stepping towards Ligur. The other demon backed off, baring his teeth like an animal, and Crowley was relieved that he hadn’t been the only one to react to supposedly good news with fear. _Messed up, indeed_.

            Z frowned at him. “What do you think I am going to do? I’ve told you I’ll send you back.”

            “Or you’ll knock us out for good,” Ligur growled.

            Z gave him a look of concern, their hand still outstretched, then slowly lowered it to their side. They turned to look at Crowley.

            Crowley met their eye and tried to hold his ground. “Why—” he said, cursing his curiosity. “Why are you really doing this?”

            “Because I’m not sure that I was right.”

            Crowley blinked. Ligur stood up, looking less afraid.

            Z shrugged. “I told you no one is the knower of all things.”

            “But—you really acted like—” Ligur said.

            “I am not a villain,” Z said to Crowley. “I told you, I’m no angel or demon.”

            They held their hand out to him. Crowley glanced down at Aziraphale. He was still on the ground, leaning on his elbows now, his head in his hands. Crowley winced and looked back up at Z. He took a step forward, slowly, and then nodded.

            Z held their hand up towards his forehead. He met their eye right before they touched him. They smiled. “You want to know what I learned most, being more among humans than either of your ‘sides?’” Their smile grew a little crooked. “It’s much more _interesting_ not knowing if you’re right.”

 

            Crowley woke up in a way he never had before, because he hadn’t been asleep. He was standing. He tensed his muscles, throughout his arms and hands, and felt them. He felt _good_ , and he would never have imagined that.

            His eyes focused without him even having to try.

            He was standing in a field. Across from him stood Aziraphale, looking perplexed as to how he had gotten there.

            They met each other’s eye.

            “You—” Aziraphale said.

            Crowley flexed his fingers and looked back at him, lost for words in spite of all of the promises he had made himself, a little stooped and uncertain in spite of all he had thought he had learned.

            But forget the power of words for a moment. He gave his angel a tentative smile.

            He was in Aziraphale’s arms in a moment. The angel had run across the grass and collided with him, so hard that both of them fell to the ground. Crowley cherished the feeling of pain in his bones as he hit, the feeling of pressure from Aziraphale’s body, the sound of both of their ringing laughter in his ears.

            All too soon, the angel pushed himself up, staring down at him with worried eyes. “Is it over?” he said. “Is it—are you—are we safe? Did I do something to bring you here, somehow, or—”

            “Don’t worry,” Crowley laughed, the sound much louder than usual because he was still on his back and he was still getting re-used to things. “It wasn’t you. And—it kind of was.”

            “But—”

            “And it’s okay. They’re not angry. At least, they’re not going to bring me back. I was supposed to come back.” And he was so, _so glad_ , to do what he was supposed to just this once.

            Over Aziraphale’s shoulder, a little further away in the field, which Crowley was beginning to recognize as one of the hills of a strangely empty St. James’ Park, he spotted another two figures. He put his hand on Aziraphale’s chest and gently pushed him over to his other side so that he could lean up on one elbow and watch them.

            Hastur and Ligur were standing across from each other as well. Ligur looked like a puppy who had escaped, had a rough night, and finally come home. He looked bedraggled and sheepish. Hastur, standing crouched with his mouth slightly open, looked at him like he might run any moment. It was unclear in which direction.

            Ligur spared a glance for Crowley, and where he lay, still almost underneath Aziraphale. He sneered at them, but it was a halfhearted sneer, as though the other half was smiling instead. Only almost. “Couldn’t you two wait a minute?” he said. He sounded softer than usual, his voice a bit husky, like he was unused to it as well. “At least until you’re somewhere _private?_ ”

            Aziraphale put his hand on Crowley’s shoulder, almost protectively, protective of _them_ , and Crowley almost laughed in pure joy at it all. Ligur was still looking at them. Crowley tilted his head towards Hastur, who hadn’t taken his eyes off of Ligur this entire time.

            Ligur gave Crowley an ‘Oh, well all right’ look, and turned to Hastur. “Well, Hastur,” he said, his voice both gruff and soft. “Happy to see me? Even a little?”

            Hastur opened his mouth wider, there was a grating sound, and then he said, strangled, “I’m not happy.”

            Ligur looked disappointed, almost hurt.

            Hastur broke out of his frozen state at last and held out a hand to him. “No,” he said. “That’s just—not it.”

            “Hmm,” Ligur said. “Not _what_.”

            Hastur curled the fingers of his outstretched hand into a fist, then took a few steps towards the other demon. He said, his voice low, “How could I be happy—after all of this? Even if it’s over. It—it is over?”

            Ligur nodded. Hastur looked relieved. Ligur dared a smile.

            Crowley was drawn away from the strange new drama in which he had never meant to become this invested by Aziraphale’s hand tapping on his arm. He turned and looked at him, and he was _far too close_ —but only for a second, and then the angel smiled and stood up. He held down a hand to him, and Crowley took it. The angel pulled him to his feet.

            The two stood, looking almost-but-not-quite at each other’s faces, and dithered. It was almost a relief. If they hadn’t both been absolutely petrified, it wouldn’t have felt, after all this nightmare, like _them_. Wouldn’t have felt real. But they didn’t have to be entirely useless.

            Crowley smiled at Aziraphale. He let himself smile the way he really wanted to.

            Aziraphale smiled back, nervous and overjoyed, and stuttered, “I could only think—there was so much we hadn’t done—so much wasted opportunity—so much more we should have—”

            Crowley held up his hand, and said, “I know.” And he gently touched Aziraphale’s mouth. The angel smiled under his fingers, and then, they did. They really Knew.

            The demons were slowly eliminating the gap between themselves. Hastur was a mere five feet away from Ligur now.

            “All I know,” Hastur said, “is that I’d rather you not be gone.” He grimaced. “Which is more than I typically care to care for anything.”

            Ligur smiled and said, “Or anyone?”

            “Don’t.”

            Hastur looked pained. Ligur took a few steps forward and patted him on the shoulder—it was more of a whack than a comforting touch, but it was more physical endearment than either of them had ever shown anybody—and said, “Chin up. We’ll get through this disgustingness as best we can.”

            The four of them took a few moments, just sort of standing there silently, with each other, awkward and happy and _perfect_. Crowley looked around at the world. There were so many details. So many blades of grass and shadows. So many colors. It was almost overwhelming.

            Aziraphale had his arm around his waist, holding him close, keeping him there.

            Crowley could sense that it was time for them all to go. He almost didn’t, and Ligur almost didn’t too, but they _did_ , in the end, turn back towards each other.

            “You two are really horrible,” Crowley called out to him and Hastur. “I hope we never see either of you again.”

            “And I like torturing people,” Ligur said. “Including myself. So I’m sure that won’t be the case.”

            Crowley grimaced.

            “’Sides. ‘Never’ is a very long time,” Ligur said with a smirk. “As we know.”

            “Ugh.”

            The demon saluted him, an odd gesture that Crowley would have fixated on in his ever-questioning mind for days after, had he not had _very many other things distracting him_ , and then Ligur and Hastur turned and left. After a few more minutes, people started to drizzle into the park, as though it were any ordinary day. Humans reclaiming their land.

            Crowley turned back to Aziraphale, who was less than one foot away and not close enough, and breathed in. “All right,” he said.

            “All right,” Aziraphale said, his voice warm and his eyes—something no word was powerful enough to describe.

            Crowley grinned. “So—” he said. “What’s next?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. <3


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